The Effectiveness of Neurofeedback on Pregnancy Anxiety and Prenatal Depression in Pregnant Women during the COVID-19: A Single-Case Research with Multiple Baseline Design

During the pandemic COVID-19, numerous studies displayed an increase in anxiety and depression in pregnant women. This present study aimed to investigate the effect of neurofeedback therapy on pregnancy anxiety and prenatal depression in pregnant women. The study was a single-case experimental study with multiple baseline design with a follow-up period. Three pregnant women were selected according to purposive sampling method and entered the study gradually in fixed intervals. The research tools included the neurofeedback therapy, Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ) and Beck Depression Inventory Second Edition (BDI-II). The findings showed that the neurofeedback reduced the severity of pregnancy anxiety and prenatal depression symptoms in both post-treatment and follow-up stages, so that the percentage of improvement for the first, second and third participants in the symptoms of pregnancy anxiety was 72%, 74% and 71% in post-treatment and 75%, 80% and 73% in follow-up stage, respectively. The percentages of improvement for the first, second and third participants in the symptoms of prenatal depression were also 72%, 77% and 77% in post-treatment and 79%, 77% and 83% in follow-up stages, respectively. Moreover, the overall percentages of improvement in post-treatment and follow-up stage in the symptoms of pregnancy anxiety were 72% and 79% and in the symptoms of prenatal depression was 75% and 80%, respectively. In addition, at the end of the intervention sessions and at the 1-month follow-up, all the three patients scored less than 14 on BDI-II, which indicated the clinical significance of the reduction of their depression symptoms on this scale. The visual analyses and the results of inter-positional and intra-positional analyses showed a significant difference between baseline and intervention stage for all subjects (PND>70, PAND>50). The percentages of non-overlapping data (PND) as a measure of effect size for the first, second and third participants in the symptoms of pregnancy anxiety were 83%, 100% and 83% respectively. The percentages of all non-overlapping data (PAND) as the second effect size criterion for the subjects were also 87.5%, 100% and 90%, respectively, which shows the effectiveness of the intervention for all the three subjects in the symptoms of pregnancy anxiety. The percentages of non-overlapping data (PND) for the first, second and third participants in the symptoms of prenatal depression were 83%, 83% and 67% respectively. The percentages of all non-overlapping data (PAND) for the subjects were 87.5%, 89% and 800% respectively, which shows the effectiveness of the intervention for all the three subjects in the symptoms of prenatal depression.