Qualitative evaluation of a support group for women with children with Zika congenital syndrome in Southern Colombia

Abstract

Purpose

To qualitatively evaluate the perceived benefits of participation in a support group (SG) for mothers of children with Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) in Southern Colombia.

Methods

The “Women of Zika” SG was running in Sourthern Colombia from August 2018 to December 2019. The evaluation was carried out between October and December 2019, 21 women participated and the information was collected in three group discussions and non-participant observation. A thematic content analysis of the data was carried out with the support of Atlas ti-v8.

Results

Women’s discourses assessing the perceived benefits of participating in the SG were organized under three categories according to the three dimensions of social support: “Teaching and learning from each other: the SG as a source of information support,” “Coping with adversity: the SG as a source of emotional support” and “Creating your own identity: the SG as a source of relational support.”

Conclusion

The SG has been an important source of social support for women with children with CZS and it meant had a shared space where they developed individual and collective agency capacities. SGs can be a useful strategy for social and therapeutic support for families with children with multiple disabilities, such as CZS.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Caring after children with CZS has negative implications on the mental health and quality of life of these women.

• Specific interventions need to be developed to improve the quality of life of mothers of children with CZS.

• Support groups are an effective strategy for providing social support to women with children with different disabilities such as CZS.

Keywords:

• Self-help groups
• women
• Zika virus
• microcephaly
• discussion group
• Colombia

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the women who participated in the study for sharing their life experiences with us and the members of the research group Health and Vulnerable Groups of the South Colombian University for their support while collecting the information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The principal investigator of this research was supported by the “Santander Program scholarship” (2020) fellowship as a pre-doctoral researcher at the University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. The last author: University of Lleida support programme to support research in deficit research areas; Serra Hunter programme (Generalitat de Cataluña).