Mental health in women experiencing preterm birth
Journal article
© 2014 misund et al.; licensee bio med central ltd. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. the creative commons public domain dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
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Date
2014-08-09Metadata
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Original version
Misund, A., Nerdrum, P. & Diseth, T. (2014). Mental health in women experiencing preterm birth. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 14(263). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2393-14-263Abstract
Background:
The aim of the study was to explore the degree of psychological distress, anxiety, and trauma related stress reactions in mothers who experience preterm birth. Secondarily, we wanted to identify possible predictors of maternal mental health problems.
Methods:
Twenty-nine mothers of 35 premature children born before 33rd week of pregnancy were assessed within two weeks after given birth. The standardized psychometric methods; Impact of Event Scale (IES), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and State Anxiety Inventory (STAI) assessed mental health problems. The predictors for maternal distress, anxiety, and trauma related stress reactions were pregnancy variables, preterm delivery, Gestation Age, maternal trait anxiety and parity. In addition, maternal prevalence of mental health problems was assessed by clinical diagnoses.
Results
Our study revealed a high prevalence (52%) of posttraumatic stress responses in the mothers.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest an early examination of mothers’ psychological reactions to preterm birth at the maternity ward. An early intervention should be considered while the child still is in the neonatal intensive care unit.