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Competing Interests: Les auteurs n’ont déclaré aucun conflit d’intérêts en relation avec cet article.

Objectives: Depression and anxiety are major causes of distress amongst parents during the perinatal period. Their pervasive effects on the parents' self-confidence, on the parent-infant relationship and on the child's development have been well documented. The aims of the present study were to describe the psychological characteristics of mothers consulting during the perinatal period and to assess the effect of brief Psychotherapy Centred on Parenthood (PCP) on the mothers' depressive and anxiety symptoms. The evolution of the mother-infant relationship is also documented. PCP is a brief mother-infant psychotherapy which focuses on the mother-infant relationship as well as the mother's mental representations in order to reduce her psychological conflicts., Method: Thirty-four mothers consulting an infant-parent outpatient clinic were assessed with respect to depression, anxiety, global functioning, severity of symptoms and the quality of their adaptation to the infant (T1). They were offered a brief PCP with an average of seven sessions. Outcome measures were collected after the end of the therapy (T2)., Results: Overall, 28 of 34 mothers completed the therapy (83%), and 23 participated in the post-therapy evaluation. Paired samples t-tests showed that completers of PCP displayed significant improvement in post-treatment measures of depression (EPDS: t = 5.13; p <0.001), anxiety (STAI-State: t = 3.06; p = 0.006), clinical impression (CGI: n = 21; t = 4.50; p <0.001), and global functioning (GAF: t = -5.05; p <0.001). The quality of adaptation in the infant-parent relationship showed a tendency to improve (PIRGAS: t = -1.98; p = 0.062)., Conclusions: These preliminary results suggested that providing PCP to this sample of consulting mothers is feasible and accompanied by high rate of clinical and functional improvement.

This pilot study explores the effects of a brief individual psychoanalytic therapy on perinatal depressive symptoms. This intervention is based on the Geneva's mother-infant intervention model. A sample of 129 pregnant women was recruited in Geneva (Switzerland) and screened for depressive symptoms with two instruments: the 'Edinburgh postnatal depression scale' (EPDS) and the 'Dépistage anténatal de la dépression postnatale'. A group of 40 women presenting depressive symptoms (treatment group) participated in a four-session intervention called 'Psychotherapy centred on parenthood (PCP)'. It consists in two antenatal and two postnatal sessions and is focussed on changing problematic representations of parenthood. This treatment group was compared to a control group of 88 women without depressive symptoms and following the usual obstetrical care. The main outcome measure was EPDS at 3 and 6 months after delivery. The 'Global assessment functioning scale' was administered at the end of each therapeutic session. The 'Parent-infant relationship global assessment scale' was administered at the two postnatal sessions in order to explore if PCP was also effective in preventing the potential negative effects of depression on mother-infant relationship. Results show that in the treatment group (N = 31), EPDS scores dropped from 12.8 to 4.8; none of these women met the EPDS cut-off score of 12 at 3 and 6 months postpartum. Mother-infant relationship was well adapted for all 31 dyads at the end of the intervention. These results suggest that PCP is a promising intervention for treating perinatal depression and helping mothers engaging in parenting.

The detection of postpartum depression (PPD) is an important public health issue because of its negative consequences on both the mother's and the infant's health. Up to now, one of the major difficulties is to find a simple and valid instrument able to detect women at risk to develop PPD already during pregnancy. The present article describes a short, simple questionnaire that was developed in Geneva, the Questionnaire de Dépistage Anténatal du risque de Dépression du Postpartum (DAD-P), previously named le Questionnaire de Genève. The authors propose a preventive strategy and follow-up that can be used by any health professional working with pregnant women.

Until today postpartum depression (PPD) remains too often banalised or misknown by the population who is frequently badly informed. Actually it is an important public health problem because it concerns more than one new mother out of ten without this pathology being diagnosed nor treated. The consequences of this depression can be serious both for the mother and for the child with latter developmental difficulties. Since several years, a Genevian team of child psychiatrists has been working on this problem and developed a screening questionnaire to identify women at risk to develop PPD. A preventive method of dynamic psychotherapy is presently being developed and implemented to the at-risk women with the collaboration of the Genevian gynaecologists.