EPPOCH Cohort: Prenatal Substance Use and Mental Health in the UK During COVID-19

3,292 participants from the UK EPPOCH cohort were surveyed between June and November 2020. The dataset contains self-reported data on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and illicit drug use before and after pregnancy recognition, alongside validated measures of depression, anxiety, and pandemic stressors. It was created by Swarali Datye and published on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze associations between prenatal substance use and depression/anxiety scores based on validated measures mentioned in the description
• Model the relationship between pandemic stressors (e.g., perceived health threat, financial difficulties) and substance co-use based on regression analysis results
• Study temporal patterns of substance use (before vs. after pregnancy recognition) based on participant-reported data
• Explore qualitative themes influencing substance use decisions (e.g., midwifery advice, vaping perceptions) based on open-ended responses

Strengths

• Dataset includes 3,292 participants, providing a substantial sample size for analysis
• Contains validated measures of depression, anxiety, and pandemic stressors alongside self-reported substance use
• Includes both quantitative survey data and qualitative thematic analysis from 380 open-ended responses

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count for the quantitative dataset is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data is from a specific time range (June–November 2020) and geographic context (UK), which may limit generalizability

Provenance

Source

EPPOCH cohort

Collection Method

Cross-sectional analysis of baseline survey data

Time Range

June–November 2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-19 06:49:53; freshness should be verified

Geography

United Kingdom