Perinatal depression is related to poorer outcomes for women and their children. Measurement indices that categorize perinatal depression as present or absent are commonly used in clinical practice and research efforts. Categorization minimizes the health effects of potentially different symptom clusters and may confound understanding of health outcomes.

The objective of this investigation is to explore the symptom clusters resulting from administering two commonly used depression screening instruments during pregnancy and postpartum.

(1) Identify the depressive symptom clusters for perinatal depression; (2) Test whether symptom clusters predict maternal and newborn outcomes, and if so, whether these differ from categorization analytics.

A secondary analysis was conducted on data from a longitudinal study of 139 women. They participated from their 3rd trimester of pregnancy through 8 months after birth and completed surveys at five times using the center for epidemiologic studies Depressed Mood Scale (CES-D) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Survey (EPDS). Analysis procedures included cluster analysis and hierarchical regression.

Individual symptoms were reported by 2.9–31.7% of the sample. Separate clusters (CES-D = 4; EPDS = 2) were identified and, of these, two clusters were primary predictors of maternal and newborn outcomes. Results differed from that obtained with cut-score analytics.

Examination of depression symptom clusters as related to health outcomes during childbearing has significance for clinical practice and research, particularly for women who would not score as depressed on established screening instruments.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.