Study Regarding the Benefits of Applying Hospital Anxiety- Depression Scale (HAD) in Athletes During Pregnancy

Pregnancy can be a very stressful time in a woman's life, a time dealing with delicate health situations. Moreover, in regard to the scale of dealing with stressful situations designed by Holmes (1970); Rahe and Arthur (1978), pregnancy occupies the 7th place, comprising a score of 40 points. Professional athletes fear that maternity could represent a disruption in their competitional activity, and a return to their previous physical condition would be significantly prolonged.In the present study, the HAD scale was applied in the case of 2 lots of pregnant professional athletes, pregnant both when included in the study as well as at a gestational period of 30 weeks. One of the lots underwent a complex program composed of obstetrics prophylactic kinetotherapy, which comprised both specific conventional kinetic methods (physical exercise, massage and posture techniques) as well as psychopedagogical ones (counselling, relaxation techniques, suggestion and autosuggestion, positive thinking); the other lot only underwent specific conventional methods. With the help of the HAD scale, the initial and final levels of depression and anxiety were determined, leading to the conclusion that they were significantly reduced in the case of the experimental lot, after applying the above-mentioned psychopedagogical methods (counselling, relaxation techniques, suggestion and autosuggestion, positive thinking).