Abstract
Purpose
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders can have far reaching negative impact on both maternal mental health and child growth and development. Multimodal group parenting programs have been shown to improve maternal mental health symptoms however, they are often costly to provide and not accessible to many mothers, especially those mothers suffering from mental health symptoms. Therefore, the authors sought to answer the following question by undertaking a systematic review of the literature: are parenting interventions aimed at improving maternal-child interaction also a way to address mental health symptoms (i.e. depression, anxiety, stress) in mothers?
Methods
The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. An online platform that supports the systematic review process and quality assessment according to Cochrane guidelines, Covidence, was used in conjunction with an adapted extraction tool to identify relevant studies and extract data for analysis.
Results
11 articles were included in the qualitative synthesis. There was great heterogeneity between study interventions and measurement of outcomes for maternal mental health symptoms which precluded meta-analysis.
Conclusion
Studies reviewed did not demonstrate consistent evidence to recommend that parenting interventions leads to improvement in maternal mental health symptoms for depression, anxiety or stress. However, there was evidence that participating in parenting programs does not worsen these symptoms and some encouraging evidence that alternative delivery methods, beyond face to face, could, with more research, lead to more financially feasible and sustainable models of delivery of these types of interventions in the future.
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Acknowledgement
Dr. Salomon was supported by the University of California San Francisco, School of Nursing’s Institutional Training Grant (T32) #T32NR016920.
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JW developed the idea for the review, EM performed the literature search and JW, MB and RS performed the data analysis. All authors participated in the drafting and critical revision of the work and approved the final submission.
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Waldrop, J., Baker, M., Salomon, R. et al. Parenting Interventions and Secondary Outcomes Related to Maternal Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Matern Child Health J 25, 870–880 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-021-03130-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-021-03130-6