Laura E. Miller-Graff

The Egyptian Revolution (January 25–11 February 2011) included protests opposing ongoing political corruption, police brutality, election fraud, and income disparity (Bakr, 2012). The largely peace...

Brief, low-intensity interventions may hold untapped promise for bolstering maternal health in low-resource contexts. The current study used propensity score matching (PSM) to evaluate uptake and differential effectiveness of two low-intensity digital perinatal health (PH) support programs in Lima, Peru. Pregnant women ( N = 251) were assigned to one of two conditions (PH vs. trauma-focused PH [TF-PH]) and received weekly psychoeducational content via WhatsApp from a lay paraprofessional for 5 weeks. Conditions were not randomly assigned; PSM was used to improve causal inference of the condition. Women were interviewed before participation (T1), immediately following treatment (T2) and at 3 (T3) and 12 months postpartum (T4). Intimate partner violence had strong negative effects on women’s mental health, multisystem resilience and parenting, and single mothers reported higher levels of depression and posttraumatic stress symptoms than did partnered women. Intervention uptake was high, with 77% of women participating in all sessions. There were no significant differences between treatment groups over time, but effect sizes indicated a slight advantage of the TF-PH condition in addressing depression symptoms ( d _r = −0.29) and multisystem resilience ( d _r = 0.39). Study findings suggest that brief interventions may be well-received and that trauma-focused supports may also confer additional benefits for addressing depression and resilience.

The theme of the 2024 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) 40th Annual Meeting was “From Bench to Bedside and Beyond: Advancing Translational Science in Traumatic Stress Studies.” The current editorial highlights the breadth and depth of scholarly contributions to the meeting, which represent timely and evidence‐based work across the translational science spectrum — bench, bedside, and beyond. Some key themes emerged across the featured articles, including the importance of adopting lifespan and intergenerational perspectives when examining trauma and its consequences, unique ethical complexities for trauma‐exposed populations, and the value of multisystem collaborations and professional support. Further, articles in this issue span foundational and basic science, clinical applications, implementation strategies, and public health and policy. This editorial reflects the conference's scientific dialogue and serves as a call to action for continued work in translational traumatic stress science.

Purpose: This study investigates the interplay between intimate partner violence (IPV), mental health symptoms (posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety), and sleep quality in pregnant women. It examines the alignment between subjective (self-reported) and objective (actigraphy) measures of sleep and explores how IPV subtypes (physical violence, psychological aggression, and sexual coercion) influence these measures, considering the potential mediating role of mental health. Methods: The study involved 46 pregnant women with a history of IPV exposure within the past year or serving as controls. Participants completed surveys assessing IPV, mental health, and self-reported sleep quality, followed by seven days of actigraphy monitoring. Statistical analyses included Spearman correlations, Bland–Altman plots for sleep measure agreement, and path analyses to explore relationships between IPV, mental health symptoms, and sleep parameters. Results: Moderate correlations were observed between subjective and objective measures for time in bed and sleep onset latency (SOL). IPV subtypes showed distinct associations with sleep parameters: physical violence directly impacted total sleep time and efficiency, while sexual coercion influenced SOL. Mental health symptoms did not mediate these relationships significantly. Discrepancies between subjective and objective sleep measures highlighted potential biases linked to IPV exposure. Conclusion: IPV exposure significantly disrupts sleep during pregnancy, with unique effects observed for different IPV subtypes. These disturbances occur independently of mental health symptoms, underscoring the need for routine sleep assessments and tailored interventions in prenatal care for IPV-exposed women. Integrating subjective and objective sleep evaluations can enhance understanding and management of sleep disturbances in this vulnerable population.

Worldwide, research has demonstrated that maternal experiences of violence can adversely affect infant development, but moderating and mediating effects on this pathway are less understood, particularly within low- and middle-income countries. Using longitudinal structural equation modeling, the present study analyzed data from 251 Peruvian mothers during the prenatal and postpartum periods. We evaluated the relations between mothers’ experiences of childhood violence (CV), prenatal intimate partner violence (IPV), posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and resilience, and how these factors influenced domains of their infants’ temperament (i.e., surgency, negative affectivity, and regulatory capacity). Consistent with hypotheses, analyses revealed that mothers’ CV exposure was associated with increased prenatal IPV and PTSS, and prenatal IPV was linked to increased prenatal PTSS and lower resilience. Prenatal PTSS was linked to lower infant regulatory capacity. Maternal prenatal resilience was negatively associated with prenatal PTSS. High postpartum maternal resilience mitigated the adverse effects of maternal CV on infant regulatory capacity. Inconsistent with hypotheses, postpartum PTSS was associated with higher infant regulatory capacity, though sensitivity testing suggested this finding may be spurious. Findings underscore the need for violence prevention and prenatal mental health interventions to reduce maternal PTSS and bolster resilience to support positive infant outcomes in Peru.

Partially nested designs (PNDs) are common in intervention studies in psychology and other social sciences. With this design, participants are assigned to treatment and control groups on an individual basis, but clustering occurs in some but not all groups (e.g., the treatment group). In recent years, there has been substantial development of methods for analyzing data from PNDs. However, little research has been done on causal inference for PNDs, especially for PNDs with nonrandomized treatment assignments. To reduce the research gap, in the current study, we used the expanded potential outcomes framework to define and identify the average causal treatment effects in PNDs. Based on the identification results, we formulated the outcome models that could produce treatment effect estimates with causal interpretation and evaluated how alternative model specifications affect the causal interpretation. We also developed an inverse propensity weighted (IPW) estimation approach and proposed a sandwich-type standard error estimator for the IPW-based estimate. Our simulation studies demonstrated that both the outcome modeling and the IPW methods specified following the identification results can yield satisfactory estimates and inferences of the average causal treatment effects. We applied the proposed approaches to data from a real-life pilot study of the Pregnant Moms' Empowerment Program for illustration. The current study provides guidance and insights on causal inference for PNDs and adds to researchers' toolbox of treatment effect estimation with PNDs.