Teaching Caregivers About Infant Sleeping, Crying Patterns May Improve Maternal Depression Scores.

Medscape (1/7, Laidman) reports that according to a study (1/1) published online Jan. 6 in the journal Pediatrics, “teaching caregivers about normal infant sleeping and crying patterns and providing them with information on infant settling techniques improved maternal depression scores.” The study involved 770 families of 781 babies. The intervention began about a month after birth, when some of the families were “given a booklet and a DVD that covered normal sleep and crying patterns, techniques for settling infants, information on possible medical causes of crying, and parent self-care advice.” The information was reinforced twice more at the eight-week and 13-week marks. Notably, at “six months, caregivers in the intervention group were less likely to score higher than 9 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, with 7.9% scoring higher than 9 in the intervention group vs 12.9% in the control cohort (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.57; 95% CI, 0.34 – 0.94; P = .03).”