The prevention and treatment of depression is a priority among mental health issues in China, and pregnant women are a key target group. Prenatal depression is easily ignored although it is highly prevalent and harmful. To reduce its prevalence, it is crucial to identifying the interaction mechanism between psychosocial factors (such as marital satisfaction and partner support) associated with prenatal depression, and controlling the modifiable risk factors.

To explore the relationship between marital satisfaction, partner phubing and depression in late-pregnancy women, and to assess the level of mediating effect of marital satisfaction on the relationship between the latter two, providing maternal and child healthcare professionals with evidence on interventions for prenatal depression.

Convenience sampling method was used to select women in late pregnancy who underwent routine prenatal check-ups in the Obstetrics Clinic, the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University from October 2020 to May 2021. A self-designed general information questionnaire was used to collect sociodemographic and obstetric data. The Partner Phubbing Scale (PPS) was used to assess partner phubbing prevalence. The Quality of Marriage Index (QMI) was used to measure the level of marital satisfaction. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used to assess the prenatal depression prevalence. Mplus 8.3 was used to establish a structural equation model for mediation analysis.

Altogether, 300 cases were recruited. All of them were included for analysis except nine cases who returned unresponsive questionnaires, obtaining a survey response rate of 97.00%. The prenatal depression prevalence in the respondents was 40.89% (119/291) . The mean scores of PPS, QMI, and EPDS for them were (25.6±6.3) , (37.9±6.0) , and (8.0±3.5) , respectively. Correlation analysis showed that partner phubbing was negatively associated with marital satisfaction (r=-0.292, P<0.01) , and positively associated with prenatal depression (r=0.350, P<0.01) . Marital satisfaction level was negatively correlated with prenatal depression (r=-0.338, P<0.01) . Mediation analysis revealed that the size of direct effect of partner phubbing on prenatal depression was 0.214, accounting for 82.63% of the total effect. Marital satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between partner phubbing and prenatal depression, with a size of mediation effect of 0.045, accounting for 17.37% of the total effect.

Partner phubbing could positively predict depression in late pregnancy, and their relationship may be partially mediated by marital satisfaction. To reduce the prevalence of depression in late pregnancy, maternal and child healthcare professionals could improve the marriage of pregnant woman via providing them with interventions to decrease the prevalence of partner phubbing.