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Supporting women in their next pregnancy
Published in Alison Brodrick, Emma Williamson, Listening to Women After Childbirth, 2020
Alison Brodrick, Emma Williamson
Pregnancy-related anxiety and fears tend to focus on areas such as health of the baby, appearance-related concerns (Huizink et al, 2014) and a fear of childbirth (Saisto & Halmesmaki, 2003; Storksen et al, 2012). Depending on severity, it can result in physical symptoms of palpations, nausea and vomiting, and is a frequent cause of insomnia (Bayrampour et al, 2016). The anxiety can feel debilitating and is complicated further by societal expectations that women should feel happy and willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing for that of the baby (Staneva & Wigginton, 2018). This can lead to women feeling isolated and inadequate as their lived experience does not meet cultural norms of the ‘good mother’ and result in women choosing to avoid dealing with their fears by not discussing or outwardly showing their anxiety as way of coping (Staneva et al, 2015). This has been termed ‘self-silencing’ with women experiencing powerlessness and a need to withdraw their true selves from intimate and social support (Jack & Ali, 2010).
Why maternal depression harms babies and children
Published in Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett, Depression in New Mothers, 2016
Anxiety can also increase the risk of preterm birth. A study of 1,820 women from Baltimore found that women with high levels of anxiety about their pregnancies were significantly more likely to have preterm babies (Orr, Reiter, Blazer, & James, 2007). Indeed, women with the highest levels of pregnancy-related anxiety had three times the risk of preterm birth compared to women with low anxiety. These findings were significant even after controlling for traditional risk factors for preterm birth including race/ethnicity, first- or second-trimester bleeding, drug use, unemployment, previous preterm or still birth, smoking, and low BMI, maternal education, and age.
Risk Factors for Depression and Anxiety during the Perinatal Period
Published in Rosa Maria Quatraro, Pietro Grussu, Handbook of Perinatal Clinical Psychology, 2020
Alessandra Biaggi, Carmine M. Pariante
Anxiety and depression are very common during pregnancy. In particular, approximately one in six women will experience anxiety symptoms and one in ten will experience depressive symptoms during the antenatal period (Kastello et al., 2016). Depression and anxiety are highly comorbid during pregnancy with women who experience antenatal anxiety being up to three times more likely to suffer from depression as well (Alvarado-Esquivel et al., 2016; Della Vedova et al., 2011; Leigh & Milgrom, 2008; Mohamad Yusuff et al., 2016; Waldie et al., 2015). Within the research into anxiety, studies have shown that “pregnancy-related anxiety” is a clinical distinct phenomenon that can be differentiated from the conventional clinical presentation of anxiety, even if it has shown to have a moderate correlation with antenatal anxiety and depression (Blackmore et al., 2016). “Pregnancy-related anxiety” refers to the preoccupation regarding the pregnancy (developing child, labour and birth, changes in maternal body, and future parenting role and concerns) and has been found to be an independent risk factor for antenatal depression in one study conducted in Tanzania where there is a high pregnancy-related mortality (Rwakarema et al., 2015). Because it has been observed that the correlated factors of “pregnancy-related anxiety” can sometimes be differentiated from those associated with the conventional symptoms of anxiety (Blackmore et al., 2016), in this chapter we will focus on understanding which are the main psychosocial, environmental and obstetric risk factors that have been associated with the common clinical presentation of antenatal depression and anxiety.
Sex-specific associations between maternal pregnancy-specific anxiety and newborn amygdalar volumes - preliminary findings from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study
Published in Stress, 2022
Satu J. Lehtola, Jetro J. Tuulari, Linnea Karlsson, John D. Lewis, Vladimir S. Fonov, D. Louis Collins, Riitta Parkkola, Jani Saunavaara, Niloofar Hashempour, Juho Pelto, Tuire Lähdesmäki, Noora M. Scheinin, Hasse Karlsson
Maternal pregnancy-specific anxiety was measured at GW24 with Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire Revised 2 (PRAQ-R2). PRAQ-Revised (PRAQ-R), a shortened version of the original PRAQ (Bergh, 1990), is a commonly used questionnaire to measure anxiety during pregnancy in primiparous women (Huizink et al., 2004). A rephrased version, PRAQ-R2, was successfully created to expand the applicability also to multiparous women (Huizink et al., 2016), and it has good to excellent internal consistency overall and at subscale level as well as strong metric and scalar invariance, indicating that the PRAQ-R2 measures similar constructs on the same scale for all pregnant women (Huizink et al., 2016). PRAQ-R2 has ten items with a range of five answers from “definitely not true” to “definitely true”, forming a total score range of 0-50 points.
Aromatherapy intervention on anxiety and pain during first stage labour in nulliparous women: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Published in Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2021
Ching-Chu Liao, Shao-Huan Lan, Yea-Yin Yen, Yen-Ping Hsieh, Shou-Jen Lan
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies for labour analgesia, including hypnosis, massage, hot compression, breathing exercise and aromatherapy, have been more popular in the past decade (Jones et al. 2012). Several studies showed the effectiveness of aromatherapy for relieving pain and anxiety of hospitalised patients (Lee and Hur 2011; Alavi et al. 2017). Furthermore, aromatherapy was revealed in one study to be associated with alleviating symptoms of pregnancy-related anxiety (Barcelona de Mendoza et al. 2016). Aromatherapy massages could significantly decrease stress and in turn enhance pregnant women’s immunity (Chen et al. 2017). Some studies investigated aromatherapy in the first stage of labour massage on maternal perineum condition and found that aromatherapy contributed to the reduced events of perineum rupture (Sriasih et al. 2018) and facilitated episiotomy healing (Vakilian et al. 2011). Other studies indicated aromatherapy’s effectiveness on reducing pain, fatigue and distress and in turn improving maternal moods of patients (Vaziri et al. 2017). Still other studies found aromatherapy’s effectiveness on reducing pain after a caesarean procedure (Joulaeerad et al. 2018) and preventing stress, anxiety and depression after childbirth (Kianpour et al. 2016).
Mental health and worries of pregnant women living through disaster recovery
Published in Health Care for Women International, 2019
Gloria Peel Giarratano, Veronica Barcelona, Jane Savage, Emily Harville
Mental health problems during pregnancy were a major concern with a significant number of women indicating depression symptomology (30.67%), PTSD (8.75%), and higher scores on pregnancy-related anxiety (17.41) and perceived stress (17.66) (Table 4). Social support played a key role in the risk for mental health problems. In Table 5, depression, PTSD, and perceived stress scores were all significantly (p < .01) associated with poor social support indicators, such as ‘no one to lend me $50’, ‘no one to help if sick’, ‘no one to take me to the clinic’, and ‘no one to talk to’. While higher pregnancy-related anxiety was only associated (p < .01) with one psychosocial indicator, the open-ended question used with this instrument provided more opportunity to understand the context of women’s worries.