IWL SHINES ON Sabirat Rubya and Farhat Tasnim Progga’s research to develop in-time intervention strategies online to help women with postpartum depression
This Q&A is part of a series called “IWL SHINES” — an inclusive research series highlighting research conducted by faculty, students, and staff at Marquette. IWL stands for the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Marquette. IWL is a network whose mission is to advance women’s leadership locally and globally through pioneering research, innovative programming, and collaborative engagement. Read more IWL SHINES Q&As here.
Sabirat Rubya, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Director, Social and Ethical Computing Lab
Website: https://sabiratrubya.com/
Farhat Tasnim Progga
PhD Student & Graduate Research Assistant
Social and Ethical Computing Lab
Department of Computer Science
Website: https://progga112.github.io
What is your research about?
Our research interest lies in the intersection of social computing and health informatics. As the director and the member of the Social and Ethical Computing Lab in the Department of Computer Science, we research and develop technology for vulnerable populations that are at high risk of developing different mental health disorders. As a part of this research effort, we are interested in facilitating social support through technology for new mothers and pregnant women suffering from perinatal mental health issues like postpartum depression. We initially reviewed the literature on this topic to figure out the state-of-the art of perinatal mental health technologies. We then analyzed user-generated content on postpartum depression from a few online health communities to have a nuanced understanding of the online social support dynamics for these populations. We are in the process of collecting data from additional sources. With our research, we plan to implement and evaluate novel systems and techniques for improving perinatal mental health and wellbeing.
How did you decide to focus on this research interest? What led you to it?
We are all aware that mental health issues are now a worldwide concern. Women’s mental health issues during the transition to motherhood are not an exception. Given the prevalence of perinatal mental health problems and the scarcity of technically feasible interventions, we decided to investigate how women deal with their perinatal mental health wellbeing using technology.
All too frequently, childbirth is glorified while the mother’s mental health is ignored.
Due to the stigma associated with mental health and the fear of losing their children, mothers often hesitate or even refrain themselves from seeking treatment.
Many of these cases remain untreated and that affects both mother’s and child’s physical and mental health. With the advancement of mobile technology and online communities, women have started to look for social support through different online platforms. We are interested to find out if these platforms are providing necessary support to improve perinatal mental health and wellbeing, and how we can improve these platforms and create new socio-technical systems to facilitate the support they need. This work has already been recognized locally and nationally, as initial findings from our studies have been awarded by the Institute of Women Leadership at Marquette University in the Forward Thinking Research Symposium and by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) as the best poster in the ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP).
What surprises have you encountered in the process of researching?
We have encountered a couple of surprising facts throughout the process of our data collection and investigation. As our formative research, we collected data from three different online platforms dedicated for discussion related to postpartum depression. While analyzing the posts and comments we collected from these communities, we discovered that mothers frequently seek emotional support by seeking validation and reassurance from others who have gone through similar experiences.
Initially, our assumption was that we would see more questions asked about treatment, medication, or coping-up strategies for depression and other perinatal mental health disorders. However, we found it fascinating how mothers were so comfortable sharing their pregnancy journey and emotional states through these online platforms (as if they were sharing their stories).
We wanted to gain an in-depth understanding of this storytelling behavior of pregnant women and new mothers, and how it benefits them.
We wanted to conduct interviews with women who have experienced symptoms of perinatal depression, and to our surprise, we could not find enough participants. We reached out to admins of different online postpartum depression communities and a few local daycare centers. We were able to get only a few participants to talk to us. We think that societal stigma has a role to play here. While in online platforms women anonymously share symptoms and the lack of a support system, they may not feel comfortable to come forward and talk to researchers as they worry that their identities will be revealed.
What do you hope others learn from your research?
Since our research topic can be approached by multi- and cross-disciplinary perspectives, numerous takeaways from our research apply beyond computer science. For example, during our interviews with mothers, we encountered clinical and psychological perspectives on perinatal depression. We learned about the dynamics of mothers’ social support from online communities and how mothers frequently seek social support from other mothers in addition to their primary support sources (their spouses and family members). Our findings reveal that women are hesitant to share postpartum depression symptoms with their OBGYNs and nurses because they frequently feel invalidated or judged. Furthermore, mothers have constant concerns about their healthcare providers contacting Child Protection Services, if they are found unfit or dangerous for parenting.
All these findings have practical implications for healthcare providers. Postpartum depression is a sensitive health context; doctors, nurses, midwives, and other postpartum healthcare providers and practitioners must be mindful of their interactions with women during their postpartum period for patients to trust them.
For researchers, it is very important to keep in mind that conducting research with vulnerable populations requires additional considerations to protect participants’ privacy and to create a safe space for them to share their experiences.
What do you want to focus on next, and why?
We would like to collect data from additional sources to understand the perspectives on perinatal mental health technology use from women with diverse backgrounds and demographics. To that end, we plan to collaborate with other faculty members in the department of Psychology and the College of Nursing at Marquette University as well as to conduct additional interviews and focus groups with new mothers/pregnant women.
From our findings so far, we are seeing the potential of “digital storytelling” for educating and providing information and emotional support to women with perinatal mental health concerns. We aim to develop an online storytelling system by applying natural language processing techniques on the textual content shared on online postpartum depression communities. We understand that there are technical and ethical barriers to achieve this goal. We surely will take time to plan out the whole process of developing and evaluating such systems to make them effective for the intended population. Additionally, we will undertake an effort to utilize the existing online platforms to create a stronger support system for women (e.g., encouraging spouses and family members to be more empathetic and understanding, making other stakeholders, such as nurses and healthcare providers aware of women’s expectations during treatment, etc.).
What do you hope is the value for your research beyond academic scholarship?
One in seven women in the USA suffer from postpartum depression. We hope that through the systems we develop, we will be able to spread awareness and reduce the stigma associated with perinatal mental health. This will allow more women to take proper action about their mental health illnesses at an early stage.
What are your favorite tips for people starting research in your field?
As peers, we recommend new researchers in our field to identify a specific problem statement before diving into research. In addition, extensive research should be conducted to determine the research gap between the problem and the existing solutions. This could be accomplished by reading recent research articles and feeling empathetic toward the problem and the population. As human-computer interaction researchers, we would urge that new researchers consider the ethical implications of the studies they carry out, as overlooking these may have serious consequences for the population being researched, and for the society overall.
Psst! Know someone doing great things? Maybe it’s you!
To recommend yourself or someone you know to be profiled in this series, please send an email with the person’s/people’s name to IWL SHINES at iwlshines@marquette.edu. Please provide a very brief description about the research involved or why you think it should be highlighted. After consideration, IWL will contact you/your nominee to start the interview process, which will entail the person/team responding in writing briefly to different interview questions from a menu of choices.
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