NCT05419167

STEP-COVID: A Program for Pregnant Women During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 1
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 100 (actual)
• Sponsor: Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years – 50 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

STEP-COVID (Supporting the Transition to and Engagement in Parenthood during the COVID-19 pandemic) is a manualized group intervention for pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic designed to foster emotion regulation and reflective capacities in participants.

Detailed description

The program aims to (a) support mentalization in relation to oneself, motherhood and the relationship with the child to be born, (b) reduce isolation by allowing participants to exchange about the positive aspects and the challenges of pregnancy and motherhood with other women, (c) explore what pregnant women are going through in the context of the pandemic, (d) allow participants to repossess their experience of pregnancy in the current context of insecurity and fear, and (e) consider new ways of coping with stress and unpleasant emotions. The program is manualized and uses structured activities based on theoretical grounds and empirical research during which facilitators share information, animate reflective activities, and facilitate exchanges.

Conditions

• Psychological
• Mental Health Issue
• Prenatal Stress
• Maternal Distress
• COVID-19 Pandemic

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	STEP-COVID	The program is offered by two facilitators to groups of three to six women, online in a synchronous mode. The intervention is divided into two phases, each including three sessions. The first 3 sessions aim to explore how the participants feel, to better understand what makes them feel this way, to allow them to exchange with other people who are going through similar experiences, and to support the ability to manage stress and more unpleasant emotions. The following three sessions aim to enable participants to refocus on their experience of pregnancy and motherhood by giving them the opportunity to reflect upon how they wish to be as mothers, upon how their personal history influences their experience of pregnancy and motherhood, upon the moments that, as mothers, might be the most pleasant and those that will require more adaptations, and upon identifying the needs they have or expect to have after childbirth as well as the resources available to them to meet these needs.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-09-01
• Primary completion: 2021-12-10
• Completion: 2022-12-10
• First posted: 2022-06-15
• Last updated: 2024-07-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada