Peer Mentor Texting

University of Washington

Status: Completed

Conditions: Perinatal Depression; Parenting Stress; Perinatal Anxiety

Treatments: Behavioral: Peer mentor texting; Behavioral: Control

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07380061

STUDY00013616

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study tested whether a peer mentor text message program (called the Nurture program) could help support mental health during pregnancy and after birth. In the study, 127 pregnant people in Washington state were randomly placed to in one of two groups: Nurture group - could text with a trained peer mentor and Control group got automated informational text messages. Researchers looked at how much participants used the program and whether it affected symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress related to parenting. Most people in the Nurture group actively used the program. Nearly all responded to their mentor and there was an average of 32 back and forth text conversations. Mentors usually started more conversations than participants did. People using Nurture had lower anxiety six weeks after giving birth compared to the control group. However there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups for depression or parenting stress. The findings suggest that having two way text conversations with peer mentors is well received and may help reduce anxiety soon after birth. More research with larger groups is needed to understand the full benefits and how to make the program widely available.

Enrollment: 127 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Women and other birthing individuals receiving prenatal care within Washington.

Exclusion criteria

• Severe mental illness such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and severe substance use disorder based on self report.
• Severe depression symptomology operationalized as PHQ-9 score 20 or higher.
• Severe suicidality (a response of "Nearly every day" to question 9, "Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?: Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way." on the PHQ-9 questionnaire.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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127 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Active Comparator group

Description:

If assigned to Nurture (intervention arm), the participant was matched with a mentor from Nurture based on participants responses in their intake form which asked if there was anything in particular that they wanted support with and if there were characteristics that were important to them to share with their mentor. The mentor sent weekly messages based on a library of prompts. Prompts provided resources on child development, connections to local support agencies, and suggestions for parent-child bonding and parental wellness activities.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Peer mentor texting

Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants receive automated interventional texts

Treatment:

Behavioral: Control