Preventing Adverse Child Development Following Maternal Depression in Pregnancy

Women assigned to the intervention condition will receive an 8-week cognitive-behavioural therapy program for antenatal depression ('Beating the Blues Before Birth'). These 8 weekly 1-hour sessions cover behavioural and cognitive strategies to recover from depression. Of these sessions, number 6 is a couple session and number 8 is dedicated for relapse prevention. Session content includes understanding antenatal depression & anxiety, pleasant activities, self-care & relaxation in pregnancy, assertiveness & self-esteem, expectations and transition to parenthood and developing a more helpful thinking style, challenging my internal critic. The couple session provides information and support to partners and includes strategies for effective communication. Women without a partner may choose to invite anyone who is involved in supporting them, e.g. friend, mother, etc. Treatments will be delivered by psychologists or provisional psychologists following a detailed manual designed specifically for pregnant women and previously evaluated in a pilot study (Milgrom et al. 2015). Following each CBT session, therapists will check off the items covered (or re-visited) from the manual and will not progress women to new sessions until all content is covered. Audio-recordings from a 10% subsample of intervention group women (with permission) will allow treatment fidelity checks.