The Efficacy of Be a Mom, a Web-Based Intervention to Prevent Postpartum Depression: Examining Mechanisms of Change in a Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Postpartum depression (PPD) is treatable and preventable, but most women do not seek professional help for their perinatal depressive symptoms. One increasingly popular approach of improving access to care is the use of web-based intervention programs. Objective The objective of this study was 2-fold: first, to assess the efficacy of Be a Mom, a brief web-based selective or indicated preventive intervention, in reducing depressive and anxiety symptoms of women at high risk for PPD; and second, to examine mechanisms of change linking modifiable self-regulatory skills (ie, emotion regulation, self-compassion, and psychological flexibility) to improved perinatal mental health outcomes. Methods This 2-arm, open-label randomized controlled trial involved a sample of 1053 perinatal women presenting high risk for PPD who were allocated to the Be a Mom intervention group or a waitlist control group and completed self-report measures at baseline and postintervention assessments. Univariate latent change score models were computed to determine changes over time in adjustment processes and outcomes, with a multigroup-model approach to detect differences between the intervention and control groups and a 2-wave latent change score model to examine whether changes in processes were related to changes in outcomes. Results Be a Mom was found to be effective in reducing depressive (intervention group: µΔ=–3.35; P<.001 vs control group: µΔ=–1.48; P<.001) and anxiety symptoms (intervention group: µΔ=–2.24; P<.001 vs control group: µΔ=–0.43; P=.04) in comparison with the control group, where such changes were inexistent or much smaller. All 3 psychological processes under study improved statistically significantly in posttreatment assessments: emotion regulation ability (Δχ23=12.3; P=.007) and psychological flexibility (Δχ23=34.9; P<.001) improved only in the intervention group, and although self-compassion increased in both groups (Δχ23=65.6; P<.001), these improvements were considerably greater in the intervention group. Conclusions These results suggest that Be a Mom, a low-intensity cognitive behavioral therapy program, is a promising first-line intervention for helping perinatal women, particularly those with early-onset PPD symptoms. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03024645; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03024645
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".