Susan Nicolson, Fiona Judd, Frances Thomson-Salo
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Adolescent motherhood can be associated with a less sensitive parenting style. This can lead to an insecure emotional relationship of the infant with their mother and can have significant, long-term adverse effects on child development. The aim of this project is to determine whether a brief peri-natal intervention to support the adolescent mother-infant relationship is associated with more sensitive mother-infant interaction at infant age 4 months.
The study will test the new intervention against usual care in a sample of 90-100 young women recruited at the Royal Women’s Hospital. The study will recruit mothers into two groups: an intervention group and a control group. The intervention will be low cost, replicable and will be set within a maternity service which is well attended by young women. It will be provided by a skilled parent-infant mental health clinician. The intervention will be provided in three steps coinciding with routine hospital care: Ante-natally, in the first days following birth, and six weeks after birth.
At the start of the study, information will be collected on demographics, psychosocial background, parenting history, ability to regulate emotions and presence of depressive symptoms. At the end of the study, the interaction of mothers and their babies will be videotaped at home when the infant is four months old. The video will be coded for different qualities of mother and infant behaviour. Mothers will also complete a questionnaire covering symptoms of depression, time spent caring for their baby, their self esteem as a parent and their view of their baby’s temperament.
The data collected will be analysed for statistically significant differences between the intervention and control group in maternal- infant interaction, their self-esteem as a parent and their view of their baby’s temperament. The data will also be analysed for any statistically significant effect of depression on maternal-infant interaction. Descriptive statistics will be used to compare the prevalence of depression, anomalous parenting history, and difficulties with emotion regulation in this study population with other populations.
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For more information please contact Dr Susan Nicolson
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Affiliations:
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Susan Nicolson
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Centre for Women's Mental Health, Royal Women's Hospital
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Fiona Judd
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Centre for Women's Mental Health, Royal Women's Hospital and
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Department of Psychiatry; University of Melbourne
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Frances Thomson-Salo
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Centre for Women's Mental Health, Royal Women's Hospital and
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Murdoch Children's Research Institute
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