CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 129Infant Health and DevelopmentSleep and related disordersPediatric Pain Management Techniques

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 118 of the 118 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Behavioral Sleep Interventions in the First Six Months of Life Do not Improve Outcomes for Mothers or Infants: A Systematic Review

Douglas, Pamela S., Hill, Peter S.·2013·Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics
DOI 10.1097/dbp.0b013e31829cafa6
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The United Kingdom's National Institute for Health Research has recently invited proposals for the design of a multicomponent primary care package of behavioral interventions to reduce parental distress caused by excessive infant crying in the first 6 months of life. A systematic review was performed to determine whether behavioral interventions for sleep, when applied by parents to infants younger than 6 months, improve maternal and infant outcomes. METHODS: Searches of PubMed, CINAHL, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews were conducted to identify systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical trials, and cohort studies investigating the effects of behavioral sleep interventions in infants younger than 6 months (January 1993-March 2013). The evidence is critically analyzed, according to PRISMA guidelines. RESULTS: Cry-fuss, feeding, and sleep problems emerge out of multiple dynamically interacting and co-evolving variables in early life and are for this reason generically referred to as regulatory problems. Studies that link behavioral interventions for sleep in the first 6 months with positive effects on maternal and infant health demonstrate 3 methodological constraints. They fail to identify and control for feeding difficulties, fail to distinguish between the neurodevelopmentally different first and second halves of the first year of life, and apply reductive analyses to evaluations of complex interventions. Despite substantial investment in recent years in implementation and evaluation of behavioral interventions for infant sleep in the first 6 months, these strategies have not been shown to decrease infant crying, prevent sleep and behavioral problems in later childhood, or protect against postnatal depression. In addition, behavioral interventions for infant sleep, applied as a population strategy of prevention from the first weeks and months, risk unintended outcomes, including increased amounts of problem crying, premature cessation of breastfeeding, worsened maternal anxiety, and, if the infant is required to sleep either day or night in a room separate from the caregiver, an increased risk of SIDS. CONCLUSION: The belief that behavioral intervention for sleep in the first 6 months of life improves outcomes for mothers and babies is historically constructed, overlooks feeding problems, and biases interpretation of data.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1097/dbp.0b013e31829cafa6

Cites

118 of 118 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 117 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–129 of 129

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Douglas, P. S., & Hill, P. S.
Affiliations
The University of Queensland (AU)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2013-09
Volume
34
Issue
7
Pages
497-507
ISSN
0196-206X (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1097/dbp.0b013e31829cafa6
OpenAlex
W1987631506
Cited by
129
References
117
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 1
FWCI
2.28
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Infant Health and Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Pediatric Pain Management Techniques
Keywords
infant sleep, behavioral sleep interventions, infant crying, parental distress, maternal outcomes, infant outcomes, feeding difficulties, postpartum depression, breastfeeding, sudden infant death syndrome, infant sleep environment, primary care intervention
MeSH terms
Crying, Female, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Mothers, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Treatment Outcome, Infant Behavior

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review