Mental health of parents with infants in NICU receiving cooling therapy for hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy

Ingram, Jenny, Odd, David ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6416-4966, Beasant, Lucy and Chakkarapani, Ela 2024. Mental health of parents with infants in NICU receiving cooling therapy for hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 10.1080/02646838.2024.2423178

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Abstract

Background Parents cuddling their babies during intensive care to promote parent-infant bonding is usual practice in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). However, babies undergoing cooling therapy and intensive care are not routinely offered parent-infant cuddles due to concerns of impacting the cooling process or intensive care. We developed the CoolCuddle intervention to enable parents to cuddle babies safely during cooling therapy. We investigated whether CoolCuddle impacted parent-infant bonding and parent’s mental health. Methods We conducted parental interviews and compared mental health and bonding measures in two cohorts of parents; one with access to CoolCuddle and the other where CoolCuddle was not available. Results Ten tertiary NICUs in England and Wales from 2019 to 2023 were involved and 107 families. There were high levels of post-delivery depression amongst all parents. However, at discharge mothers in the CoolCuddle group had significantly less depression, lower EPDS scores, and higher MIBS scores (consistent with better mother-infant bonding) than those where CoolCuddle was not available. All measures appeared similar when re-measured at 8 weeks. Parents reported they were not ready to access psychological support or information whilst on NICU and stressed the need of mental health support following discharge, which was not offered or available. Conclusion The CoolCuddle intervention was associated with a lower prevalence of depression and enhanced bonding scores for mothers at discharge compared to those who did not cuddle their babies. Parents highlighted increased levels of postnatal depression following the sudden and traumatic admission of their infant to NICU after birth asphyxia.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Medicine
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Start Date: 2024-11-06
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	0264-6838
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	18 November 2024
Date of Acceptance:	22 October 2024
Last Modified:	09 Dec 2024 16:31
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174065

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