A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online, Compassion-Based Intervention for Maternal Psychological Well-Being in the First Year Postpartum

Abstract

New self-help interventions have been called for to promote psychological well-being among mothers in the first year postpartum, with compassion-based interventions having potential in this regard. The present study developed and evaluated a low-intensity, online, compassion-based intervention for this population called Kindness for Mums Online (KFMO). UK mothers of infants under 1 year (N = 206) participated in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial, comparing KFMO with a waitlist control. The effect of the intervention on well-being (the primary outcome) was small and was sensitive to the way missing data were treated. However, KFMO robustly increased self-compassion relative to control, from baseline (week 0) to post-intervention (week 6), and from baseline to follow-up (week 12). No effects were observed on other secondary outcomes. The findings suggest that self-compassion can be increased in postpartum mothers via an accessible, low-intensity, web-based, self-help program. However, this did not translate into robust improvements in well-being. Study limitations include relatively high attrition rates and limited generalizability to more diverse samples.