Maternal mental health matters: Indicators for perinatal mental health—A scoping review

Elly Layton; Alexandra Roddy Mitchell; Elissa Kennedy; Allisyn C. Moran; Francesca Palestra; Neerja Chowdhary; Shanon McNab; Caroline S. E. Homer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0317998

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 24, 2024
24 Oct 2024 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Rebuttal letter .docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r001
21 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Maria José Nogueira, Editor PONE-D-24-46366Maternal Mental Health Matters: A scoping review of indicators for perinatal mental healthPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Homer, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 05 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Very pertinent study, with good theoretical foundation. The title of an SR must always end with: A Scoping Review and not in the way it is presented. The abstract must contain a set of information that is not clear in the study. They mention that they carry out an SR but do not follow the principles of their research protocol and the recommendation (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist). Do not put acronyms on abstract. Unclear method. It is recommended that the SR protocol is registered and included in the Open Science Framework (OSF), for example, before publishing the report. They should not have chronological lines to map out all the evidence on the topic under study. It would have been easier if they had included the gray literature they included in the research in the diagram. It is confusing for anyone who reads how you did the research and how you arrived at the results. When extracting the results, I would like to have seen the PRISMA flow diagram explained. From what they seem, it is not clear how they proceeded with data extraction and analysis. Dot provides numbers of evidence sources selected, assessed for eligibility and included in the review, with reasons for exclusions at each stage, using the flow diagram. Removal of results is unclear. Very confusing. Do not state the process for selecting sources of evidence (i.e., screening and eligibility) included in the scoping review. In the "Summary of indicators mapped against PMH ToC" and the "Supplementary file 3. Indicator data extracted from each resource", there are incorrect references to all resources. in the text it presents one type of references and in the table another. must be uniform in accordance with the magazine's requests. Korst et al (US) no references nº (Table1). It would be interesting to provide a general interpretation of the results in relation to the review questions and objectives, as well as possible implications. There are acronyms that are not spelled out, for example CDC. Reviewer #2: Mertodologia: A search was carried out (Medline, Embase PsycInfo ). Why didn't you search Pubmed, the largest health database? The term perinatal period \| No results found as a DeCS/MeSH term, Health Sciences Descriptors The terms mental health and indicator correspond to several DeCS/MeSH and Health Sciences Descriptors, so it's essential to include the ID to identify which one was used in the search. Supplementary file one does not mention which Boolean phrases were used in the search, so we could not replicate the search. We also searched Governmental websites from English-speaking countries; it would be essential to mention the phrase in natural language as they did that search. In the Prisma flowchart, it would be necessary to mention whether or not there were findings in this way and through direct contact with researchers (grey literature). The description of the results should include the overall number of articles found or the PRISMA flowchart to make it easier to understand. Very confusing discussion: They present the limitations of the review in the discussion and should emphasise them at the end of the article. Including a short conclusion withgs and implications for practice would be essential the main findin. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Sara Palma Reviewer #2: Yes: Delfina Ana Pereira Ramos Teixeira ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r002
Revision 1
20 Dec 2024 Author Response 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Very pertinent study, with good theoretical foundation. The title of an SR must always end with: A Scoping Review and not in the way it is presented. Thank you for your feedback. We have changed the title accordingly to now read: “Maternal Mental Health Matters: Indicators for Perinatal Mental Health - : A Scoping Review” The abstract must contain a set of information that is not clear in the study. They mention that they carry out an SR but do not follow the principles of their research protocol and the recommendation (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist). We have edited the Abstract to provide the key information more clearly. We have followed the principles of a scoping review. This is detailed in the PRIMSA-ScR checklist which is now found in S1. Do not put acronyms on abstract. There are acronyms that are not spelled out, for example CDC. This has been addressed. We have ensured all acronyms have been spelled out. It is recommended that the SR protocol is registered and included in the Open Science Framework (OSF), for example, before publishing the report. The scoping review is not registered, however our protocol has now been added as a supplementary file (S1 Appendix). They should not have chronological lines to map out all the evidence on the topic under study. We are not clear as to what this comment refers to, so we have been unable to respond. We are unclear of the meaning of this comment, if further clarification could be provided, we would be happy to address it. It would have been easier if they had included the gray literature they included in the research in the diagram. We have also now included grey literature in the PRISMA flow diagram (Fig 1) and included an exclusion criterion in the body of the manuscript. Rationale for choice of grey literature has also been included. It is confusing for anyone who reads how you did the research and how you arrived at the results. When extracting the results, I would like to have seen the PRISMA flow diagram explained. From what they seem, it is not clear how they proceeded with data extraction and analysis. Dot provides numbers of evidence sources selected, assessed for eligibility and included in the review, with reasons for exclusions at each stage, using the flow diagram. Thank you for this feedback. We have now explained the PRISMA flow diagram in the results section and included it as Figure 1 (opposed to as a supplementary file). Results section (line 150) now reads: “A total of 5808 resources from three databases were retrieved (Figure 1). An additional 12 resources from other sources including government websites and international agency websites were also retrieved. After duplicates were removed 4082 records were screened at the title/abstract stage and 109 at full text. Overall, 2 studies could not be retrieved and 91 were excluded at full text screening, resulting in 18 resources for inclusion.” Removal of results is unclear. Very confusing. Do not state the process for selecting sources of evidence (i.e., screening and eligibility) included in the scoping review. In the "Summary of indicators mapped against PMH ToC" and the "Supplementary file 3. We have clarified this and included more about what we did in the Methods and the results of this are now in the Findings. We hope that makes it clearer. Indicator data extracted from each resource", there are incorrect references to all resources. in the text it presents one type of references and in the table another. must be uniform in accordance with the magazine's requests. Korst et al (US) no references nº (Table1). References have been updated to be consistent throughout the text and tables. It would be interesting to provide a general interpretation of the results in relation to the review questions and objectives, as well as possible implications. We have revised the Discussion to address this comment. The possible implications have also been clarified in the discussion. Reviewer #2: Mertodologia: A search was carried out (Medline, Embase PsycInfo ). Why didn't you search Pubmed, the largest health database? We did not search the PubMed interface as we searched the Medline database directly through the Ovid interface. The term perinatal period \| No results found as a DeCS/MeSH term, Health Sciences Descriptors S2 Table includes all search terms used. The term perinatal was used however pregnancy, postnatal, peripartum, etc were also used. This was done with the aim of capturing all relevant resources even if some were specific to pregnancy or postpartum, but therefore still meet the definition of the perinatal period. The terms mental health and indicator correspond to several DeCS/MeSH and Health Sciences Descriptors, so it's essential to include the ID to identify which one was used in the search. Supplementary file one does not mention which Boolean phrases were used in the search, so we could not replicate the search. We have added a note to the supplementary table which now describes which search terms were MeSH terms/keywords and the search should therefore be reproducible. We also searched Governmental websites from English-speaking countries; it would be essential to mention the phrase in natural language as they did that search. We have now included more information on how we searched governmental websites in the methods. Methods section (line 112) now reads: “For each of these resources, available indicator dashboards were systemically reviewed for relevant indicators and the keyword ‘perinatal mental health’ was searched.” In the Prisma flowchart, it would be necessary to mention whether or not there were findings in this way and through direct contact with researchers (grey literature). The methods have also been updated to expand the search strategy of the grey resources. These have also been included in the PRISMA (Fig 1). We did not find any extra resources through contact with researchers, which we have now stated in the methods. The description of the results should include the overall number of articles found or the PRISMA flowchart to make it easier to understand. Thank you for this feedback. We have now explained the PRISMA flow diagram in the results section and included it as Figure 1 (opposed to as a supplementary file). Results section (line 150) now reads: “A total of 5808 resources from three databases were retrieved (Figure 1). An additional 12 resources from other sources including government websites and international agency websites were also retrieved. After duplicates were removed 4082 records were screened at the title/abstract stage and 109 at full text. Overall, 2 studies could not be retrieved and 91 were excluded at full text screening, resulting in 18 resources for inclusion.” Very confusing discussion: They present the limitations of the review in the discussion and should emphasise them at the end of the article. Including a short conclusion withgs and implications for practice would be essential the main findin. We have worked on the Discussion to improve the flow. We have clarified the implications of this work in the discussion. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r003
6 Jan 2025 Decision Letter - Maria José Nogueira, Editor PONE-D-24-46366R1Maternal Mental Health Matters: Indicators for Perinatal Mental Health - A Scoping ReviewPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Homer, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 20 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Maria José Nogueira, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you very much for your concern in making the necessary rectifications. Regarding the time limits for research. The authors selected the publication date limit from 1 January 2000 to 4 October 2024. I question why they selected this period, since ScR should not have a period for research? However, i suggested, what they show in "data extraction and analysis", lines 135-140, must be presented in the results and what they show in lines 143-147 in "data extraction and analysis". Lastly, in the discussion of the results, there is no comparison of authors. I think it would enrich the results. Reviewer #2: The authors present the methodology using the PRIMA flowchart and complement it with annexes, making the results much easier to understand. The way they present the results of the articles also makes them easier to read and understand, as does the discussion. However, they could separate the conclusion or a summary and the limitations of discussing the results. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Sara Elisabete Cavaco Palma Reviewer #2: Yes: Delfina Ana Pereira Ramos Teixeira ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r004
Revision 2
6 Jan 2025 Author Response Thank you for the feedback regarding: Maternal Mental Health Matters: Indicators for Perinatal Mental Health - A Scoping Review. Our response to each point from the reviewers can be found below Reviewer #1: Thank you very much for your concern in making the necessary rectifications. Regarding the time limits for research. The authors selected the publication date limit from 1 January 2000 to 4 October 2024. I question why they selected this period, since ScR should not have a period for research? We wanted to include recent research and felt that the year 2000 was as far back as we wanted to go. We have added that justification in the Methods and also a line under limitations. However, i suggested, what they show in "data extraction and analysis", lines 135-140, must be presented in the results and what they show in lines 143-147 in "data extraction and analysis". Lines 135-140 are the section under Data extraction and analysis. This is clearly the process which was undertaken and not the findings so we would prefer to keep it in the Methods as is commonly presented this way. Lines 143-147 do present the findings – the results of the search process. Lastly, in the discussion of the results, there is no comparison of authors. I think it would enrich the results. We are not really sure what is meant here. We have never presented a comparison of authors before in a scoping review. The authors are all listed in the supplementary files. Reviewer #2: The authors present the methodology using the PRIMA flowchart and complement it with annexes, making the results much easier to understand. The way they present the results of the articles also makes them easier to read and understand, as does the discussion. However, they could separate the conclusion or a summary and the limitations of discussing the results. There is a paragraph on the limitations already within the Discussion. We have made a heading for the Conclusion as suggested. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers R2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r005
9 Jan 2025 Decision Letter - Maria José Nogueira, Editor Maternal Mental Health Matters: Indicators for Perinatal Mental Health - A Scoping Review PONE-D-24-46366R2 Dear Dr. Caroline SE Homer We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Maria José Nogueira, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r006
Formally Accepted
16 Jan 2025 Acceptance Letter - Maria José Nogueira, Editor PONE-D-24-46366R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Homer, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Maria José Nogueira Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317998.r007

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