Considering Comorbidities and Individual Differences in Testing a Gaming Behavioral Activation App for Perinatal Depression and Anxiety: Open Trial Pilot Intervention Study.

Background: There is increasing interest in the development of scalable digital mental health interventions for perinatal populations to increase accessibility. Mobile behavioral activation (BA) is efficacious for the treatment of perinatal depression; however, the effect of comorbid anxiety and depression (CAD) on symptom trajectories remains underexplored. This is important given that at least 10% of women in the perinatal period experience CAD.

Objective: We assessed whether there were differences in symptom trajectories in pregnant participants with CAD as compared to those with depression only (ie, major depressive disorder [MDD]) during intervention with a BA mobile gaming app.

Methods: Pregnant adults with either CAD (n=10) or MDD (n=7) used a BA app for 10 weeks and completed biweekly symptom severity questionnaires for depression and anxiety. We assessed whether baseline diagnoses were associated with differential symptom trajectories across the study with mixed effects longitudinal models.

Results: When controlling for baseline symptoms, results revealed a significant interaction between baseline diagnosis and the quadratic component of study week on anxiety (β=.18, SE 0.07; t62=2.61; P=.01), revealing a tendency for anxiety in the CAD group to increase initially and then decrease at an accelerated rate, whereas MDD symptoms were relatively stable across time. There was a significant effect of linear time on depression (β=-.39, SE 0.11; t68=-3.51; P=.001), showing that depression declined steadily across time for both groups. There was a significant effect of baseline diagnosis on depression (β=-8.53, SE 3.93; t13=-2.17; P=.05), suggesting that those with MDD had higher follow-up depression compared to those with CAD when holding other predictors constant.

Conclusions: The app was beneficial in reducing depression symptoms in perinatal individuals with different comorbidity profiles. With respect to anxiety symptom trajectories, however, there was more variability. The app may be especially effective for the treatment of anxiety symptoms among individuals with CAD, as it encourages in-the-moment ecologically relevant exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli. Despite no significant group difference in baseline anxiety symptoms, the MDD group did not have a significant reduction in their anxiety symptoms across the study period, and some individuals had an increase in anxiety. Findings may point to opportunities for the augmentation of BA gaming apps for those with MDD to more effectively target anxiety symptoms. Overall, findings suggest there may be value in considering comorbidities and individual variations in participants when developing scalable mobile interventions for perinatal populations.