$300,000 Grant Tests Prenatal Massage as Depression Prevention in Underserved Mothers

The Case for Studying Massage in Maternal Care

Postpartum depression affects roughly 10% to 15% of new mothers in the United States, with substantially higher rates among women from low-income and minority backgrounds. Left untreated, it carries consequences for both mother and infant: impaired attachment, developmental disruptions, and a significantly elevated risk of prolonged depression. Evidence-based interventions exist, but access is uneven, and for women navigating poverty, language barriers, and historical mistrust of medical institutions, standard clinical treatments may not be the most accessible entry point.

Prenatal massage has a modest but growing evidence base suggesting it can reduce cortisol levels, lower anxiety scores, and improve sleep quality in pregnant women. Whether those benefits translate into a reduction in postpartum depression -- a clinically meaningful and durable outcome -- has not been tested in a rigorous, community-based setting. A new three-year grant aims to do exactly that.

The Study Design

The Massage Therapy Foundation has awarded $300,000 to the University of Denver to fund a study titled "Prenatal Massage: A Complementary Approach for Maternal Health and Mental Health," led by Primary Investigator Galena Rhoades, PhD. The research will be conducted in partnership with Thriving Families, a Denver nonprofit that serves perinatal women and birthing people from under-resourced and minority communities.

The trial adds massage to an existing, evidence-based program called MotherWise -- a trauma-informed, culturally responsive maternal wellness curriculum already serving the target population. Participants will be divided into two groups: one receiving the standard MotherWise program, and a second receiving MotherWise plus six 20-minute prenatal massage sessions delivered by licensed massage therapists trained specifically in prenatal care. Outcomes will be compared at the study's endpoint.

The primary outcome is postpartum depression rates. Secondary outcomes include anxiety scores, pain levels, sleep quality, stress measures, preterm birth rates, and infant birth weight. The study will also assess implementation factors: whether the massage component is feasible to deliver at scale, acceptable to participants, and adoptable by similar community programs elsewhere.

Why This Population, Why This Program

"Evidence suggests that prenatal massage confers meaningful health and mental health benefits, and we need rigorous research about what it looks like when prenatal massage is integrated into real-world, community programs," said Rhoades. "This grant allows us to partner with Thriving Families to evaluate whether adding brief, prenatal massage sessions to MotherWise can reduce postpartum depression and inform a scalable model for equitable maternal care."

Funding comes from the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) and Massage Envy, as part of AMTA's broader commitment of $2.5 million over five years for massage therapy research. "Investing in research like this is essential to advancing our profession and demonstrating the far-reaching benefits of massage therapy," said Cindy Farrar, AMTA National President.

The trial is prospective and randomized, which places it methodologically above most existing massage research. However, blinding participants is impossible -- they know whether they received massage -- which introduces potential response bias. Effect sizes for prenatal massage on depression outcomes in the existing literature are modest, meaning the trial will need sufficient enrollment to detect meaningful differences. Results are expected within three years.