ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1597655
This article is part of the Research TopicPerinatal mental health: Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and FearView all 17 articles
Improved mental health for women receiving Infant Mental Health Home Visiting: A randomized controlled trial
Provisionally accepted
Jennifer Marie Jester1*
Ann Stacks2
Jessica Riggs3
Holly E Brophy-Herb4
Maria Muzik3
Katherine Rosenblum3*
Michigan Collaborative for Infant Mental Health Research1*- 1University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States
- 2Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, United States
- 3Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
- 4Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States
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Abstract Introduction. This study evaluates the impact of a home-based infant mental health intervention on maternal mental health symptoms. Prevalence rates of maternal depression, anxiety and trauma symptoms are quite high during the postpartum period and can contribute to ruptures in the parent-child relationship and infant development. While some infant mental health interventions improve depression, less is known about the impact of home-based or attachment-based psychotherapeutic interventions on maternal anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder. Method. Using a randomized controlled trial design, mothers with infants were recruited and randomized to infant mental health home visiting (IMH-HV; n = 38) or a control group (n = 35). However, five dyads who were assigned to the treatment group but received no treatment were omitted from the analysis, for a per-protocol analysis of 68 mothers. Mothers reported on their depression (Patient Health Questionnaire, PHQ-9), anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder, GAD-7), and trauma symptoms (PTSD Checklist, PCL-5) at baseline, and six and 12 months later. Results. The mothers in the per-protocol treatment group (n = 33) demonstrated greater decreases in mental health symptoms over the 12 months of the study than those in the control group (n = 35) (slope effects: for depression (-0.19, p = .015), anxiety (-0.13, p = .058), and trauma (-0.46, p = .057)). Discussion. Results suggest that IMH-HV services are effective in reducing mental health symptoms for mothers who actually received treatment.
Keywords: infant mental health, Postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Home visiting
Received: 21 Mar 2025; Accepted: 27 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jester, Stacks, Riggs, Brophy-Herb, Muzik, Rosenblum and Research. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jennifer Marie Jester, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States
Katherine Rosenblum, Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Michigan Collaborative for Infant Mental Health Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States
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