Dr Holly Reid, Research Associate at PRIME, talks about a recent trip to the Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology (SRIP) Annual Conference.

A small group of us from the PRIME team have just returned from a very sunny and successful few days in Dresden, Germany having attended the SRIP 44th Annual Conference. The two-day in-person event welcomed professionals from psychology, psychiatry, obstetrics, midwifery and paediatrics, so it was lovely bumping into familiar faces that I had met via online meetings, but never in real life!

The conference showcased a variety of great work – it really was inspiring to see so much being done in the perinatal sphere, but it also meant the two-day schedule was jam-packed with over 100 intriguing presentations, not to mention the posters and keynote talks.

First up, I attended a group of oral presentations entitled ‘Perinatal loss: Insights and experiences’, which highlighted the nuanced and personal ways in which parents experience pregnancy loss, as well as the decision-making after a loss. Our own Dr Debbie Smith also presented the moving findings of a study that investigated couples’ experiences of parenting a live baby following a previous stillbirth.

Later on, I watched an informative and thorough symposium about the parent-infant relationship in the context of mental health difficulties. This session featured PRIME’s Lead Dr Anja Wittkowski, who presented a qualitative study of women’s experiences of psychological therapy in perinatal secondary care settings, and outlined the importance of the therapeutic bond and moving from self-blame to self-compassion.

Other presentation highlights included hearing about a promising music intervention called Mamas in Harmony to reduce maternal postnatal anxiety and stress, and some qualitative accounts of placenta-eating post-birth.

Speedy reading was required to take in the 52 posters on display throughout the conference; a couple that caught my eye included a review of green space and nature-focused interventions to improve parent-infant relationships, as well as a qualitative investigation of supporting mothers to feed their very premature babies breastmilk when admitted to NICU.

And of course, PRIME was represented again by Gamze Kaplan (a PhD student), Dr Debbie Smith and Dr Ming Wai Wan’s poster on pregnancy experiences of expectant parents with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (a genetic condition that causes tumours to grow along the nerves).

Considering it was scheduled for the second to last session of the conference, the symposium I chaired, ‘Perinatal mental health difficulties: Novel insights from evidenced interventions to intervention development’, was really well-attended. Dr Anja Wittkowski started by presenting a review of manualised attachment-based interventions, followed by Leah Millard (a PhD student in PRIME) who spoke about the benefits of perinatal compassion-focused therapy.

Dr Emily Eisner (Research Fellow) talked about the preliminary findings of the DAWN-P (Digital Assessment of Wellbeing for New Parents) trial, which investigated the use of a smartphone app to screen for postnatal depression in new parents.

And finally, I presented the findings of my fourth PhD study, which investigated intervention priorities for reducing maternal suicidal ideation and behaviour during the perinatal period, and recommendations for developing an intervention to treat perinatal suicidal ideation in the future.

On our last morning in Dresden, we had a final explore of the city, including a very necessary splurge in the Lindt shop and a climb up the 275 steps to the 67-metre-high viewing platform at the top of the Frauenkirche (the Lutheran Church of Our Lady), taking home memories of the beautiful baroque architecture, filigree of the church spires and glistening river Elbe.

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