Title: Postpartum depression in Vietnam: A scoping review of symptoms, consequences, and
management
Version: 2 Date: 06 Feb 2023
Reviewer's report:
The manuscript requires extensive revision prior to consideration for publication. There are
many areas that require further explanation and literature support.
Introduction and Background:
- need to provide rationale for symptom clustering. States clustering enhances early detection
in nursing practice but does not explain how. How does it impact outcome? On Page 8
acknowledges that the value and the legitimacy of clustering was not address in their work.
Clustering infers mutual exclusion yet this is not supported physiologically. Even in table 3 there
is overlap (e.g. did not define difference between sleep disturbance and nighttime waking apart
from infant care).
-In the SOS section, the authors include multiple postpartum health issues but state their focus is
on PPD, yet includes symptoms of psychosis to emphasize need for screening and intervention.
Most literature do not include "baby blues" as equivalent to PPD, as PPD has specific criteria
as described in the DSM.
-Need to be clearer about language related to methods. This is not a systematic review, it is
stated as a scoping review.  Need to define "systemically synthesized", especially in the context
of a scoping review. Needs to provide references as to the scoping review methodology used
(see Pham et al, 20014 for discussion about this specific type of review and the required step as
described by various methodologists). Figure 1 provides some details but insufficient to follow
their steps (in the identification section there is likely an extra digit to the N=15838 and there is
no information  in the figure how the authors went from the ID section with over 1500 articles
to 53 articles). No rationale provided as to why review limited to 2010 to 2022?
-Further details about the 2012 review would be helpful. What type of review was it? What
population(s) was described? What could have changed in the last 10 years? Thi is important as
the authors use this  as their rationale for their review.
-Page 5 it would be helpful to provide potential explanations for the significant variance in
reported prevalence rates of PPD in Asian populations of women.
-Need to define "child stunting" and early childhood growth" and expand on this consequence
as described by other researchers.
-Table 2  requires attention- format out of sync with the data provided. Time of measurement %
is greater than 100%. Data source shows only 2 sources but diagnostic interviews were another
source.
-Table 3 - unclear as symptom clusters not mutually exclusive nor is each cluster operationally
defined. No rationale provided as to why they reported % by typo of study (qualitative vs
quantitative).
-Need to remove all discussion points from the results section. it is very difficult to review the
results when the authors added interpretive comments along with their data.
-The discussion contains very limited references which makes it difficult for the reader to
understand and contextualize the findings.
page 9 - more references are needed to support the need for interventions in the early days
postpartum.