NCT05830266

Mother-infant Bonding in the Brain: a Mindfulness-based Intervention

Mother-infant Bonding in the Brain: Promoting Maternal Mental Health and High-quality Mother-infant Interactions Via a Mindfulness-based Intervention

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 64 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Tilburg University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The study investigates the effectiveness of the mindfulness-based intervention "Mindful with your Baby" in women with babies between 5-9 months postpartum who experience heightened levels of postpartum depression, anxiety and/or parental stress. The intervention "Mindful with your Baby" is one of the very few interventions for maternal postnatal mental health issues that takes the bond between mother and infant into account. It is hypothesized that the "Mindful with your Baby" intervention will reduce levels of postpartum depression, anxiety and parental stress, and improve mother-infant behavioral interaction and increase neural synchrony between mother and infant brains.

Conditions

• Postpartum Depression
• Postpartum Anxiety
• Parental Stress

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	"Mindful with your Baby" group-based therapist-guided intervention	This 8-sessions long intervention is one of very few interventions that actively includes the baby in the therapy sessions. The intervention includes the following sessions: "Becoming aware of the autopilot", "Practice to really look at your baby", "Getting back in touch with yourself", "Responding sensitively to your baby", "Taking care of yourself in the difficult moments", "Distance and proximity: it's both part of it", "Dealing with expectations of yourself and the environment" and "Mindful parenting: trial and error". The intervention is a group-based therapist-guided intervention via a video-conferencing tool (e.g., Zoom).
BEHAVIORAL	"Mindful with your baby" self-guided online intervention	This 8-sessions long intervention includes the following sessions: "Autopilot", "Fresh view", "At home in your body", "Responsive versus reactive parenting", "Kindness to yourself", "Distance and proximity", "Boundaries and taking care of yourself" and "Mindful parenting - day by day". The intervention is an individual self-guided online intervention.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-07-01
• Primary completion: 2026-07-01
• Completion: 2026-09-01
• First posted: 2023-04-26
• Last updated: 2025-09-19

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Netherlands