Prenatal stress self-help mindfulness intervention via social media: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Background

Prenatal stress is a pressing issue. However, there is a lack of robust evidence for psychosocial interventions to manage this problem.

Aims

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention on reducing prenatal stress compared to participation in health education groups.

Methods

A randomized controlled trial was conducted in a prenatal clinic of comprehensive tertiary care from April to October 2017. A total of 108 pregnant women were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control group. Participants completed self-report measures of depression, anxiety, perceived stress, fatigue, positive and negative affect, and mindfulness before, immediately after, and 15 weeks after the 4-week intervention period. Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze the intervention outcomes.

Results

The results supported greater improvement in terms of perceived stress (Wald χ²=26.94, p<0.001), fatigue (Wald χ²=17.61, p<0.001), positive affect (Wald χ²=9.03, p = 0.011), negative affect (Wald χ²=11.37, p = 0.003), and mindfulness (Wald χ²=24.97, p<0.001) in the intervention group than in the control group.

Conclusions

The self-help mindfulness intervention decreased prenatal stress and negative affect and improved positive affect and mindfulness.

Keywords:

• Mindfulness
• prenatal stress
• pregnancy
• social media
• randomized controlled trial

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants for their time and efforts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Xuan Zhang and Pingzhen Lin contributed equally to this paper. The manuscript preparation was performed by Xuan Zhang. The collection of data was performed by Pingzhen Lin. The analysis of data was performed by Pingzhen Lin, Jiwei Sun, Yaoyao Sun, Danfeng Cao, Xuan Zhang. Di Shao interpreted the data and provided intellectual input. FengLin Cao contributed to the design of the study. All the authors have approved the final draft

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant Number: 17BSH054] and the Surface Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number: 32071084].