Archives of women's mental health
-
Arch Womens Ment Health · Oct 2014
Antenatal depression case finding by community health workers in South Africa: feasibility of a mobile phone application.
Randomized controlled trials conducted in resource-limited settings have shown that once women with depressed mood are evaluated by specialists and referred for treatment, lay health workers can be trained to effectively administer psychological treatments. We sought to determine the extent to which community health workers could also be trained to conduct case finding using short and ultrashort screening instruments programmed into mobile phones. Pregnant, Xhosa-speaking women were recruited independently in two cross-sectional studies (N = 1,144 and N = 361) conducted in Khayelitsha, South Africa and assessed for antenatal depression. ⋯ All four subscales demonstrated excellent discrimination, with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values ranging from 0.91 to 0.99. Maximal discrimination was observed for the 7-item depressive symptoms subscale: at the conventional screening threshold of ≥10, it had 0.97 sensitivity and 0.76 specificity for detecting probable antenatal depression. The comparability of the findings across the two studies suggests that it is feasible to use community health workers to conduct case finding for antenatal depression.
-
Arch Womens Ment Health · Oct 2014
CALM Pregnancy: results of a pilot study of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for perinatal anxiety.
Many women experience anxiety during pregnancy with potential negative effects on maternal, birth, and child outcomes. Because of potential risks of fetal exposure to psychotropic medications, efficacious non-pharmacologic approaches are urgently needed. However, no published studies of psychotherapeutic treatments for anxiety in pregnancy exist. ⋯ Participants regarded their experience in the intervention to be overwhelmingly positive. MBCT in the form of the CALM Pregnancy intervention holds potential to provide effective, non-pharmacological treatment for pregnant women with anxiety. These promising findings warrant further testing of the intervention with a randomized controlled trial.