Photo: Bryan Goodchild
Martha Zimmermann, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry & behavioral sciences, is the recipient of a highly competitive award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to test the effectiveness of a text message-based intervention aimed at preventing perinatal anxiety.
“Perinatal anxiety disorders affect one in five pregnant or postpartum individuals. It’s the most common mental health condition during pregnancy and postpartum, even more common than perinatal depression, but there’s less public awareness around it and it’s less likely to be identified,” Dr. Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann will be testing a text message intervention she developed called Reaching Calm in a small pilot trial at four obstetric practices. Patients can sign up for the intervention using their phone number to receive text messages that will include links to external videos, interactive activities and a website with continuous access to resources and emergency contacts.
The goal of the intervention is to deliver a low intensity resource prior to the development of an anxiety disorder, rather than waiting until a condition is causing clinically significant distress.
“Given that perinatal anxiety disorders are so common, I think it’s important that we are thinking upstream before these adverse consequences happen to the perinatal individual and their families and children,” Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann said the lack of accessible evidence-based approaches to prevent perinatal anxiety and the poor outcomes caused by anxiety for perinatal individuals and their offspring are the reasons Reaching Calm was developed and is being tested.
“We know that individuals who are experiencing economic marginalization are more likely to experience perinatal anxiety, but less likely to access adequate mental health care. We’ve really focused all our development work on individuals who are experiencing that greater risk,” Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann had previously adapted the Reaching Calm intervention for perinatal individuals and for obstetric settings as part of her work funded by a Mentored Career Development award from UMass Chan in 2022. She is completing beta-testing on the intervention in a study focused on integrating suicide risk assessment into Reaching Calm with 30 perinatal patients from UMass Memorial’s Community Women’s Care Clinic.
Zimmermann is leading the study, supported by mentorship from a multidisciplinary team, including Nancy Byatt, DO, MS’15, MBA, professor of psychiatry, obstetrics & gynecology, and population & quantitative health sciences and executive director of the Lifeline for Families Center & Lifeline for Moms; Edwin D. Boudreaux, PhD, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Center for Accelerating Practices to End Suicide; Christopher Sheldrick, PhD, professor of psychiatry & behavioral sciences; Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers, MD, MSc, associate professor of pediatrics at UMass Chan-Baystate; and Camille A. Clare, MD, MPH, faculty member at Montefiore Medical Center and president-elect of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award provides support for the career development of investigators who have made a commitment to focus their research endeavors on patient-oriented research. Zimmermann’s award is for $650,000 over four years.
“This award will allow me to continue my training, research and professional development, and get more experience in clinical trial design methods, user-centered design and other elements to help begin my career as an independent investigator,” Zimmermann said. “It will help me secure a next level grant in the future and that is transformational and essential to the next phase of my career.”
