Maternal Depression clinical trials

Building Regulation in Dual Generations - Telehealth Model

Families who experience maternal mental illness and a variety of chronic stressors are currently underserved by the parenting programs. The investigators propose that impairments in maternal self-regulation, which result in unsupportive parenting, directly impact children's own self-regulation and neurobiology, leading to risk for intergenerational transmission of mental illness. The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate a program that is targeted at improving underlying self-regulatory mechanisms in both mothers with depression and their 3- to 5-year-old children. It is hypothesized that children exposed to maternal mental illness will have greater self-regulatory deficits across emotional and behavioural domains compared to children not exposed to mental illness. The effects of maternal mental illness are expected to be compounded for children of mothers reporting a higher degree of chronic stressors, including poverty, housing instability, violence, and low social support. Further, it is hypothesized that taking a dual-generation intervention approach to addressing self-regulatory mechanisms underlying psychopathology at the level of the mother, child, and dyad (i.e. parenting interactions) will improve both maternal capacities and child outcomes. A feasibility study has been conducted in-person (NCT04347707). Results from this trial showed positive effects on child and mother well-being as well as parenting skills. Our current study will be conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic to adhere to public health guidelines to reduce in-person contact and physical distance. The objectives for this study are two-fold: 1) establish a better understanding of the self-regulatory processes that are altered in preschool-aged children exposed to maternal mental illness, and determine the mediating role of parenting behaviours, as well as the moderating impact of chronic stress exposure; and 2) evaluate a novel dual-generation intervention for mothers with mental illness using a virtual format and their 3- to 5-year-old children based on existing gold-standard evidence-based approaches.