Pregnant women's mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to the trimester of pregnancy Mariño Narváez, Carolina Puertas González, José Antonio Romero Gonzalez, Borja Christin Kraneis, Marie Peralta Ramírez, María Isabel This work makes part of the project I+D+i Ref. PID2019-110115GB-I00 financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency 10.13039/501100011033. Aim: This study aimed to analyze the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnant women according to the pregnancy trimester, comparing their psychopathological symptomatology, pregnancy-specific stress, resilience and perceived stress to those of women pregnant before the pandemic. Methods: A total of 797 pregnant women participated in the study, one group of 393 women pregnant before the pandemic and the other of 404 women pregnant during the pandemic. Student-t test was used to analyze continuous data and the Chi-square test was used for categorical data. Results: Psychopathological symptomatology was significantly higher in six subscales of the SCL-90-R in pregnant women during COVID-19: somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, obsessions-compulsions, mainly on the first two trimesters. There is also a higher level of pregnancy-specific stress in pregnant women during the pandemic on the first two trimesters, most likely due to the hypervigilance and fears related to the COVID-19 disease. Nevertheless, perceived stress, usually elevated during pregnancy, was lower in women pregnant during the pandemic in comparison to those pregnant before, as a positive consequence of being on lockdown and diminishing the exposure to daily stressful situations. Conclusions: Knowing the struggles these women go through during each trimester of pregnancy can be the key to a better health professional-patient relationship, consequently having a positive impact on their mental and physical health. 2025-05-23T06:34:43Z 2025-05-23T06:34:43Z 2023-11 journal article Published version: Mariño-Narvaez, C., Puertas-Gonzalez, J. A., Romero-Gonzalez, B., Kraneis, M. C., & Peralta-Ramirez, M. I. (2023). Pregnant women’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to the trimester of pregnancy. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 43(3), 557–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/02646838.2023.2279039 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/104201 10.1080/02646838.2023.2279039 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Taylor & Francis