Maternal suicide is a preventable cause of death that is tragically understudied. Because pregnancy and motherhood are often viewed as protective against self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs), there is a widely held assumption that parenthood is incongruous with suicide risk. However, even though the transition to parenthood is momentous, it is also potentially a distressing milestone for many mothers, heightening risk for psychopathology via dynamic disruptions to social and biological processes. In fact, suicide is the second leading cause of mortality among postpartum women and accounts for at least 20% of deaths in the first year after birth.

STEPPS is an important first study toward significantly advancing the field’s understanding of SITBs during the perinatal period. The project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oregon and University of Utah and utilizes an intergenerational framework to study high-risk maternal populations with a focus on emotion dysregulation and employs a longitudinal design. We plan to assess 150 mothers during their 3rd trimester of pregnancy (T1), and re-assess mothers at 6 weeks (T2) and 4 months (T3) postpartum. We hypothesize that perinatal risk factors (e.g., financial and parenting stress) will be associated with increases in SITBs across the perinatal period as well as on a daily basis, and that protective factors (e.g., reasons for living) will reduce this risk.