Project Title:	Depressed Mothers' and Infants' Vagal Tone and Affect are Increased by Massage
Principal Investigator/Program Director:	Tiffany Field, Ph.D.
Other Investigators and Departments (or other Universities, if applicable):	Miguel Diego, Ph.D.
Community Based Organization-Collaborator (if applicable)	NA
Funding Source (e.g., NICHD, NCI, Dept of Education, Children’s Trust):	NCCAM
Annual Direct Costs:	$200,000
Annual Facility and Administration Costs (F&A) and Rate, (e.g., 53%, 10%):	53%
Total Project Award (Combined Direct and F&A Costs):	$612,000
Dates of Award (if pending, indicated Pending):	Pending
Lay Abstract (in space below): Please be concise (space below will word wrap and expand)	Please include: (a) Specific Aims, Objectives, and/or Hypotheses of the study; (b) Participants (disease or disability, age, gender, child, family, etc), (c) Project type (eg., descriptive study, service demonstration project, case study, ethnographic study, clinical trial); (d) Brief description of methods and procedures; and (e) anticipated outcomes/benefits
Postpartum depression is noted to have negative effects on mother-infant interactions and later child development. The mothers’ limited facial expressions and vocalizations as well as the infants’ limited expressivity during the postpartum period contribute to these difficult interactions. According to the polyvagal theory of Porges, the vagus innervates the facial and vocal muscles. The limited expressivity of depressed mothers and their infants might be attributed to their low vagal activity also noted during the postpartum period. We have shown that massage therapy decreases depression in depressed women and their infants. We have also documented that massage therapy can increase vagal activity, at least in a preterm infant sample. Massaging postpartum depressed mothers and their infants may increase their vagal activity and, in turn, their expressivity. In the proposed study, massage therapy will be given to a group of postpartum depressed mothers (N=40) by their significant others. For a second group (N=40) we will not only teach the mother massage to the significant others, as in the first group, but also teach the mothers to massage their infants. The mother and the infant massages will occur before bedtime twice per week for the first six months of infancy. These two groups will be compared to a postpartum depressed control group (N=40) and a non-depressed control group (N=40) at the neonatal stage, at 3 and at 6 months on: 1) depression; 2) vagal activity; and 3) facial and vocal expressions of the mothers and infants. The groups will also be compared on infant performance on the Bayley Scale for Infant Mental Development at 6 months. At 3 and 6 months, the group that receives both mother and infant massage is expected to show maximum benefit followed by the mother only massage group in having lower depression scores, higher vagal activity, more facial and vocal expressions and better performance on the Bayley (at 6 months). The mother only massage group will be expected to improve more than the depressed control group. Path analyses will be conducted separately on the mothers’ and infants’ data, and each analysis is expected to show significant pathways from massage therapy to vagal activity to facial and vocal expressions.
Abstracts and/or Publications Resulting from the Project: