Experiences of early parenthood in and beyond the Coronavirus Pandemic [COVID-19]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The challenges of parenthood into and beyond the Coronavirus pandemic/outbreak; An Investigation of Perinatal Mental Health: How can we Understand and Address this experience to Improve Service Delivery and the Mental Well-Being of Mothers, Infants and Families?\n
IRAS ID
286205
Contact name
Filiz Celik
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Hywel Dda University Health Board
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
The novel coronavirus pandemic presents challenges and changes to the lived experience of all individuals. We are interested in learning about the experiences of pregnant women, new mothers and their families during the Coronavirus pandemic and understanding the potential impact of the virus on mental wellbeing.\n\nWomen accessing peri-natal mental health services during the Coronavirus Pandemic are eligible to take part in this study. Learning more about individuals’ experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and new parenthood are important to help us to understand the emotional needs of women and their families during these times.\n\nParticipants will be invited to complete an online survey responding to questions which will assess individuals’ experiences of Coronavirus, level of anxiety and depression; amount of emotional support which is available to them and impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on themselves and their families. Participants will also be requested to provide background information such as age. The survey will take respondents approximately 20 minutes to compete and will be completed anonymously online via secure survey platform Qualitrics. \n\nParticipants will be invited to engage in a one-to-one semi structured interview with a systemic and family psychotherapist who will guide the conversation using a topic guide. The interviewer will invite participants to talk about issues related to their peri-natal period during the pandemic. Interviews will be conducted electronically via videoconferencing platform in a virtual meeting room and last between 15 minutes to an hour dependent on how much the participant wishes to talk about discuss their experiences. \n\nThe results of this combined research will help us to understand what services can make the most difference to patients and may help other patients in the future.\nSummary of Results
We looked at if depression and mood in expectant and new mothers were influenced by changes in social support during the Covid-19 pandemic, concerns people had about Covid-19 and the distress caused by the ongoing pandemic. Intrusive thoughts relating to the pandemic was found to lead to higher levels of depression. We found that Intrusive thoughts relating to the pandemic and general Covid-19 concerns were linked to negative mood. This means that negative mood states and depression are influenced in different ways for these people during the pandemic. Knowing about this will help providers of perinatal care to think of ways to help expectant and new mothers during times of uncertainty and crisis. As such we suggest that perinatal care providers distinguish between mood disturbance following a negative event and depression and look to give help and advice with this in mind.We also carried out interviews with expectant and new mothers. The topics raised by the interviewees covered four themes:
Theme 1: ‘Women, Perinatal Period and Mental Health Problems’.
Theme 2: ‘COVID and Parenthood: Social Distancing and Isolation as a Challenge During the Perinatal Period’; Theme 3: ‘Social Distancing and Medical Care’ and Theme 4: ‘Parenthood and COVID’.Overall, these themes indicated that COVID-19 Pandemic caused concerns and worries on pregnant, birthing, and post-partum women who took part in this study and their families. Findings revealed that diminished opportunities for social support during perinatal period created an adverse mental health impact in terms of anxiety around contracting the disease and inability to carry out previous activities, the hospital experience, and challenges of post-partum care of the babies and mums. Overall, COVID-19 appears to have a ripple effect on women and their families experiencing perinatal period during COVID-19 period. Primiparous women expressed struggles in gaining confidence without the full familial (i.e., impaired intergenerational interactions), social (i.e., lack of involvement of friends, neighbors, colleagues, opportunities to socialize in public places with multiple individuals) and community (i.e., mother and baby groups, play groups) and institutional (i.e., diminished health care support worker involvement, midwifery visits, support person during hospital visits and birth) support. Multiparous women also expressed grievances in all these areas, but their accounts indicated that they had added distress of dividing their time between a new-born and older child/ren and often with the added distress of responsibilities of home-schooling older children.
Although participants largely did not link their poor mental well-being of perinatal period to the COVID-19 Pandemic, they linked causes of their poorer experiences to the COVID-19 Pandemic and therefore identified the pandemic as contributor to their heightened perinatal mental distress resulting in referral to Perinatal Mental Health Services.Three further contributory themes were identified: ‘Positive Impact of COVID -19’; ‘Could not bond with the baby’; and ‘Frustration with the Policy Makers’.
The interviews revealed information about the experiences of this group of patients that can be used to inform the way perinatal care is delivered and highlighted the need to learn from this pandemic to prioritize the needs of the perinatal population for future pandemics and other disasters.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
20/WA/0243
Date of REC Opinion
1 Sep 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion