Study Contact

john.krzeczkowski@camh.ca

Community Partners

Women’s Health Concern’s Clinic, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Kids Can Fly, Niagara Region Public Health

Study Description

The study aims to test the immense potential that treating PPD with a widely available, preferred, cost-effective, non-pharmacological intervention (online group CBT) has to adaptively alter infant emotion regulation (ER). This work aims to provide the first direct evidence of the impact of maternal treatment on the infant medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region critical to the development of ER and multiple forms of psychopathology, and will provide novel experimental evidence testing the experience-dependent neuroplasticity of the mPFC in a way never done before in humans. Furthermore, this study will also examine the putative mechanisms underlying the changes in infant ER following maternal treatment. This will enable us to determine how the benefits of maternal treatment are translated to infants. The results of this study have the potential to improve the lives of the thousands of families affected by PPD worldwide, as well as address calls to examine the impact of implementing effective, targeted early interventions to prevent mental illness.

130 mothers with PPD and their infants will be recruited. A single-blind randomized controlled trial with experimental (n=65, CBT+TAU) and control (n=65, TAU alone) groups will be used to address our aims. Infant emotion regulation will be assessed using measures of medial prefrontal cortical brain activity via functional near-infrared spectroscopy [fNIRS], corticolimbic systems using electroencephalography [EEG], and parasympathetic nervous system function via heart rate variability [HRV]). Gold-standard observational tasks (Face-to-Face Stillface task, Parent Child Early Relational Assessment) and parental reports (temperament) will also be used. Mechanisms underlying changes in infants following maternal CBT will be assessed using changes in mother-infant synchrony (measured using dual fNIRS, EEG and HRV techniques) at rest and during our observed task. We will also assess maternal regulatory behaviours and affective predictability during observational assessments, along with changes in PPD and anxiety, to determine if these contribute to infant changes.

We Aim To

1) To determine the impact of group CBT for PPD on infant emotion regulation

2) Examine the putative mechanisms underlying these changes.