Mindful Parenting Interventions for the Postpartum Period: Acceptance and Preferences of Mothers with and Without Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

Objectives This study aims to examine postpartum Portuguese mothers' emotional experiences, help-seeking behaviours, and perceived barriers to seeking help. It also intends to analyze mothers' knowledge and acceptability of mindful parenting interventions and their preferences concerning the characteristics of these interventions. Differences between mothers with positive and negative screenings for depression were explored for all variables. Methods Participants were recruited online and answered several questions aimed at assessing their emotional experience, helpseeking behaviours, perceived barriers to seeking help, knowledge about mindful parenting, acceptability of parenting and mindful parenting interventions during the postpartum period, and preferences concerning those interventions. They also completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. The sample comprises 599 mothers with a child aged 0-12 months (Mage = 5.28 months). Results Approximately 36% of mothers screened positively for depressive symptoms, and 24.2% thought about seeking help or actually sought help. Structural barriers were the most cited reasons for not seeking help. Approximately 95% of mothers felt that participating in a mindful parenting intervention during the postpartum period would be useful. Concerning mothers' preferences, most mothers preferred a weekly frequency (85.0%) and an average of 10 sessions (48.6%) of 45-60 min in length (52.6%). Learning how to better understand the baby's emotions and behaviours and learning new tools to better cope with parenting stress were among the intervention contents considered most useful. Conclusions Our findings support postpartum mothers' acceptability of mindful parenting interventions and provide important insights concerning specific features to consider and content to include in those interventions.

The role of mothers’ self‐compassion on mother–infant bonding during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A longitudinal study exploring the mediating role of mindful parenting and parenting stress in the postpartum period

“…However, it is important to keep in mind that, in addition to well‐known practical, attitudinal, and structural barriers that keep postpartum mothers from seeking traditional face‐to‐face professional help (Dennis & Chung‐Lee, 2006 ; Fernandes et al., 2020b ), the current risk of contagion in face‐to‐face interventions created the need to develop web‐based psychological interventions. These interventions seem to be useful in reducing the spread of COVID‐19 disease during the pandemic (Thapa et al., 2020 ) and have been shown to be easily accessible, safe and cost‐effective compared to face‐to‐face interventions (Preuss et al., 2021 ).…”

Post-Adoption Help-Seeking in Portugal: A Comprehensive Study on Parental Difficulties and Help-Seeking Behaviors and Perceptions

“…Finally, practical/structural barriers include geographic distance to services, unavailability or inadequacy of support services, professionals’ turnover, uneven distribution of services, limited access to health care, and time and financial constraints [ 10 , 14 , 35 , 39 ]. Despite most of the barriers identified in adoption literature share similarities to what was found with biological parents (e.g., for perinatal depression) [ 32 , 33 , 40 ], there has been no research comparing adoptive and biological parents on this topic, which hinder a comprehensive picture of the relative importance of the different barriers to help-seeking during the post-adoption period and that should be consequently addressed.…”

“…Interventions that target adoptive parents’ well-being and other well-established mechanisms of change underlying the outcomes of available parenting interventions (e.g., parent–child relationship) [ 4 ] may be one promising avenue to address adoptive families’ needs. Based on prior conceptualizations in the adoption [ 16 ] and parenting [ 40 , 41 ] literature, we used the term “psychological parenting interventions” in this study to encompass a range of interventions based on psychological theories, directed at parents only or including the child, and targeting various features related to the parental role (e.g., parental mental health, parent–child relationship). They can include a variety of delivery formats and features and have shown to improve parents and child outcomes [ 16 , 41 ].…”

Mothers with depressed mood: help-seeking from husbands and child-rearing behaviors

“…Despite this, only a small percentage of mothers seek help from specialized medical institutions when they suspect that they have postpartum depression [ 5 ]. In addition, only 12.0% of mothers actually visit specialized medical institutions after being recommended to have a doctor screen them using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) [ 6 ], which is a screening tool for postpartum depression [ 7 ]. It is presumed that there are mothers who, despite suspecting themselves of having postpartum depression, are raising their children while in a depressed state, without receiving specialized medical care.…”