UK Prenatal Substance Use During COVID-19 Pandemic Linked to Depression and Stressors

3,292 participants from the EPPOCH cohort in the UK reported substance use, depression, anxiety, and pandemic stressors between June and November 2020. The dataset likely contains cross-sectional survey data on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and illicit drug use before and after pregnancy recognition. 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 based on validated mental health measures.
• Investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic stressors, like perceived health threat and financial difficulties, on substance use.
• Compare prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and illicit drug use before and after pregnancy recognition.
• Explore qualitative themes, such as vaping as a perceived safer-use strategy, from open-ended responses.
• Model the relationship between prenatal co-use of substances and pandemic-related stressors.

Strengths

• Includes 3,292 participants from a large UK pregnancy cohort.
• Contains validated measures of depression, anxiety, pregnancy-related anxiety, and pandemic stressors.
• Provides specific prevalence rates for substances: tobacco (8.75%), alcohol (8.60%), cannabis (1.49%), illicit drugs (0.12%).
• Combines quantitative survey data with qualitative thematic analysis of 380 open-ended responses.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data covers a specific 5-month period (June–November 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Provenance

Source

EPPOCH cohort study.

Collection Method

Cross-sectional analysis of baseline survey data.

Time Range

June–November 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-19 06:49:54; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom.