£3.8m funds international psychotherapy trial with new mothers

A UCL team has been awarded £3.8 million from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to fund a new study in Lebanon and Kenya looking at the treatment of post-natal depression, child development, and the mother-child relationship. With the NIHR's Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) programme funding, the research team will evaluate the impact of group Inter-personal psychotherapy (IPT) on child developmental outcomes, maternal depression and the mother-child relationship. Principal investigator Professor Peter Fonagy (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: "Babies do not understand about lockdown and post-natal depression knows no international boundaries any more than a SARS-CoV-2 virus. "Developing robust systems of post-natal mental health care will relieve pressure on overburdened services and may teach us important lessons about how to improve UK's organisation of perinatal care." Postnatal depression (PND) is a serious, disabling mental health condition affecting between 18-25% of women postnatally in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Extensive evidence shows that maternal depression is consistently associated with adverse impacts on caregiving and on children's cognitive and socio-emotional development. The proposed research programme in Kenya and Lebanon will address the currently limited evidence concerning effective interventions to treat PND in LMICs and test whether a WHO-recommended psychological therapy modified to match local priorities, delivered sustainably within existing healthcare systems, can lead to improvements in key measures of early child development alongside improvements in maternal mental health.