Project Description

Background: Annually, 1 in 7 newborns are admitted for neonatal care in the UK. For parents, this induces fear, anxiety and daily stresses of having a sick child, impairing bonding and disrupting their normal family life. This impacts their mental wellbeing, approximately 39% developing a new mental health problem, e.g. 40% of mothers develop depression, three times higher than mothers with well babies. For more socially deprived parents and ethnic minority groups, these rates are even higher. One year after birth, post-traumatic stress in these parents remains high at 27.1%. Approaches to prevention/diagnosis of parent mental health problems during this time are limited, resource heavy and not tailored for their unique situation. Associated societal costs of >£8billion and NHS costs of >£1.2billion, we need new approaches to reducing this burden for these families.

Solutions: Our team has developed two novel approaches to tacking these issues. Firstly, an App that has been co-developed with parents whose baby required neonatal care, it includes a 12-day course (12 minutes/day), containing compassion focused learning, guided practices, parent stories, well-being tips and check-ins. Parents have found its use simple, accessible (multi-lingual) and improves their mental wellbeing. The second approach is an AI driven smartphone App that tracks the mood of the user through their device’s camera. The algorithm has learned from >450,000 facial images to identify mood disorders. This project will undertake two clinical studies to establish the feasibility of these digital solutions in reducing the burden of mental health disorders in this high-risk population.