Suicide, a leading cause of maternal postpartum death, may be influenced by perinatal depression, with brief behavioral activation (BA) psychotherapy offering a potential intervention irrespective of clinician or delivery type. To examine this, a study evaluated whether the likelihood of endorsing suicidal ideation (SI) changed during BA therapy among 1,230 pregnant and postpartum adults, mean age of 33.4 years. The study found that each additional behavioral activation session decreased the odds of endorsing suicidal ideation (SI) by 25% (odds ratio (OR)=0.75), while SI decreased by 80% at 3 months post-randomization compared with treatment (OR=0.20).
No differences were observed by clinician type or delivery modality. Goodness-of-fit analyses showed that SI was most likely to be endorsed at treatment onset compared with later time points. These findings suggest that the likelihood of…
