Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Population and Public Health

Women in India have the highest rates of depression during pregnancy across the world. We have partnered with Mata Jai Kaur Maternal and Child Clinic, who provide care to women from 558 villages in rural Rajasthan, India. The clinic has trained lay counsellors to screen women for depression during pregnancy and after birth, and to deliver talk therapy. The lay counsellors have found that the services for depression during pregnancy and after birth are not culturally safe. We will work with lay counsellors and women in the villages of rural Rajasthan to understand the ways that culture impacts how they seek and receive services for depression during pregnancy. The women and lay counsellors will be our research partners. We will work with an expert to ensure that the women and lay counsellors remain safe during the research. We will ask women to take photos to help explain the impact of culture on depression. We will ask lay counsellors to take notes to help explain what pieces of culture are not being understood. We will interview both women and lay counsellors to help explain their pictures and notes. We will have group discussions to ensure that we understand the experiences of the women and lay counsellors correctly. We will work with women and lay counsellors and a creative expert to develop including a documentary film, a photobook, a children's book. This information can help community members better understand depression in pregnancy and how they can help. We will include branding to make sure that the voices of the women and lay counsellors are heard. We will then change our screening tools and talk therapy programs in response to our learning. Through this work, we hope to identify factors that lead to depression so we can find ways to reduce the rate of depression in pregnant women. We can then use this learning to help pregnant women who are depressed in other countries.