2002 International International Biennial Scientific Meeting

GROUP INTERPERSONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR POSTNATAL DEPRESSION: A PILOT STUDY

Rebecca Reay*, Emma Adams** and Cathy Owen***

* ACT Mental Health Services, Department of Psychological Medicine, The Canberra Hospital
** Private Practice, Canberra
*** Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Sydney

Rebecca.Reay@act.gov.au

Rationale: Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) has been demonstrated to be an effective treatment for postnatal depression (O'Hara MW, Stuart S, Gorman L, Wenzel A, 2000). IPT is a time limited psychotherapy that focuses on the clients interpersonal relationships as the point of intervention. Since there are significant advantages of group treatment over individual therapy, IPT was adapted for use in a group setting to assess its effectiveness and acceptability.

Objectives:

• To establish whether interpersonal psychotherapy in a group format is an effective intervention for women with postnatal depression
• To assess maintenance of improvement at three-month follow-up
• To assess whether group interpersonal psychotherapy is an acceptable treatment to postnatally depressed women in terms of patient satisfaction measures.

Methods: An open pilot trial was conducted at the Dept of Psychological Medicine, The Canberra Hospital. 18 mothers who met the DSMIV criteria for major depression participated in an 8 week closed group based on interpersonal psychotherapy. Several measures of depressive symptoms and social functioning were administered at baseline, 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 3 months post treatment. These included the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Changes in social adjustment and interpersonal functioning were measured using the Social Adjustment Scale.

Results: Endpoint analysis demonstrated a significant decrease in mean depression scores over the course of treatment and improvement in social functioning.

Conclusions: The results from this open pilot treatment trial suggest that IPT-G may be an efficacious treatment for postnatal depression, however further research is required involving larger samples and control groups.