Impact of an mHealth intervention on parents’ emotional health and on the neurodevelopment of high-risk infants

Abstract

We assess the prenatal and postnatal effect of the High-Risk Pregnancy and Baby Parenting programme, which is complemented with two mHealth (app-based) resources. The GLM Repeated Measures Model technique was used to explore differences in the emotional health of the participants and in their infants’ neurodevelopment, comparing programme versus usual care groups, composed of 150 and 195 participants, respectively. The mothers presented lower levels of depression (mean difference 1.74, p = 0.04, 95% CI 0.07, 3.40) and higher levels of resilience (mean difference 4.09, p = 0.004, 95% CI 1.40, 6.78). For the fathers, positive effects on resilience were recorded ( p < 0.001). A positive treatment effect was perceived in the infants’ cognitive ( p = 0.014), language ( p < 0.001) and motor ( p = 0.006) development. These findings suggest application of the programme can benefit maternal emotional health and infant neurodevelopment. M-Health technology could make this programme more accessible.