The effectiveness of eHealth interventions for treatment of perinatal anxiety: Review of the lecture (Preprint)

Abstract

Perinatal period is a particular time for women to develop mental illness or exacerbate previous mental health problems. Access to treatment is more difficult due to associated perinatal conditions. eHealth interventions have been found to be effective in treating a wide range of emotional prob-lems that occur in this period.

The objective of this study is to carry out a systematic review of available Internet-based interven-tions for anxiety disorder in perinatal period with a focus on program’s components, structure, content and efficacy.

Five electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, ProQuest and Web of Science) were sys-tematically searched from the earliest data available to September 2023. A combination of terms related to perinatal, eHealth interventions, anxiety, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was used. RCT’s and feasibility studies were included if they reported and eHealth interventions for anxiety in perinatal period.

In total nine studies evaluating eight distinct eHealth interventions were identified and analyzed. The effect of internet-interventions on anxiety outcomes were significant in five out of nine. There was a moderate between groups effect size (Hedges g= 0,76-0,79 ; Cohen d= 0.65) in favor of eHealth intervention compared with control groups in three studies. The effect was maintained at follow-up with a small to large effect size in four studies. Regarding fear of birth, results indicated large improvement from pre to post treatment (Cohen d=0.95). However, another eHealth interven-tion was not proven better than control group at posttest but a small effect size (Cohen d= 0.28) was obtained at follow-up.

eHealth interventions have the potential to improve symptoms of anxiety, comorbid anxiety and depression, and fear of birth in the perinatal period. However,future research is needed with a fo-cus on the content and structure of the programs, because it is a critical step in developing more effective interventions or improving existing ones.