Cherry Bond’s baby massage group were finalists in the 1999 Guild of Health Writers award for Good Practice in Integrated Healthcare, Jointly organised by the Foundation for Integrated Medicine, which Prince Charles founded and of which he is the president.

HRH the Price of Wales presented the prestigious awards at Pall Mall in a flurry of media and photographers.  Professor Vivette Glover (lead researcher) and Cherry Bond (leader of Infant massage team) attended the ceremony representing both teams working at Queen Charlottes Hospital. Pioneering research carried out at this hospital has shown that teaching parents to massage their babies has the potential to improve interaction between mother and child.

Clinical scientist Professor Vivette Glover, director of the fetal and neonatal stress research centre at Queen Charlotte’s, said the research results were “exciting” because they showed a possible way of “ dealing” with a hitherto intractable problem”.

This award precipitated a second study larger study, soon to be published.
The results of this study indicate that, although the mothers in the support group did show reduced depression scores after attending their sessions, a significantly greater proportion of mothers who attended baby massage classes showed a clinical reduction in their scores on the depression questionnaire (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale – EPDS).
When the change in scores on the mother-infant interaction scales were examined for each group at the one-year follow-up, it was found that the group who attended baby massage classes had a pattern of improvement that showed that they were now similar to the non-depressed group.

The mothers who attended the support group continued to be significantly worse than the non-depressed group on this measure.  Finally many of the parents continued massage for the whole year, so it obviously got them onto a better long term trajectory.

In conclusion, this larger follow up study has shown that mothers with postnatal depression who attended the baby massage group had a better rate of recovery than mothers who attended a support group, and that they had a better long term relationship with their baby.  The mothers enjoyed the practice of massaging, their baby and it had a long term benefit for both themselves and their child”.

Reference for award research

Onozawa, K., Glover, V., Adams, D., Modi, N., & Kumar, R. (2001). Infant massage improves mother-infant interaction for mothers with postnatal depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 63.