Does counseling affect parental postpartum depression?

Introduction and objectives: During pregnancy and after childbirth,
parents experience new roles and responsibilities, which may affect their
mood and lead to postpartum depression. The present study examines the
effects of counseling on postpartum depression in parents.
Materials and methods: The study is a clinical trial on 76 couples from
Urmia, Iran. The samples were chosen from week 34 of pregnancy to 6 months
after childbirth and randomly assigned to control (38 couples) and intervention
(38 couples) groups. The control group received routine care, while parents
in the intervention group received routine care plus five counseling sessions.
All the women and their spouse in the control and intervention groups were
assessed with the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale at the beginning
of study, 2 and 6 months after childbirth. Descriptive statistics tests and t-test
were used to extract the results. P-values less than 0.05 were considered
significant.
Findings: Mean Edinburgh depression score 2 months after childbirth
was higher for control group mothers (10.18 ± 1.53) as compared with the
intervention group (8.21 ± 1.43). This was statistically significant. The
mean Edinburgh depression scores for fathers in the control and intervention
groups were 6.92 ± 1.51 and 6.36 ± 1.42, respectively, but this difference was
not statistically significant. Also, the mean Edinburgh depression scores 6
months after childbirth were found to be higher for the control group mothers
(p = 0.001) and fathers (p = 0.019), and this was statistically significant.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that couple-based counseling
significantly decreased depression scores of nulliparous women within 2-6
months after delivery. However, the interventions failed to have effects on
fathers within 2 months after childbirth and only proved statistically effective
after 6 months.