Impact of Psychological Grief Counseling on the Severity of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Mothers after Stillbirths

ABSTRACT

Planned support and interventions are necessary in the care and support of women who have experienced stillbirth. The present study was conducted to determine the effect of psychological grief counseling on the symptom severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in mothers after stillbirths. This interventional study is semi-experimental. The study was conducted on 100 women who had recently had stillbirths. Eligible samples were selected and randomly divided into the two groups of intervention and control. The data collection tool was the PPQ,¹ which was completed as a pre-test and post-test in both groups. The intervention group received four sessions of psychological grief counseling over two weeks, and the control group received only routine postnatal care. PTSD severity was evaluated in both groups at the end of the fourth week after the final session. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean score of the severity of the PTSD symptoms in both groups after the intervention (P = 0.0001), which means that psychological grief counseling led to the reduction of PTSD severity in mothers. Given the positive impact of psychological grief counseling on reducing the severity of PTSD, integration of intensive psychological interventions in the maternity care system seems essential for faster transition of grief stages and for the prevention of severe cases of PTSD.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to all those participated and cooperated in the study. We also thank the personnel of the Maternity Hospital of Ali Ibn Abi Talib and staffs of health care centers and Health Deputy of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (ZAUMS). The present article is derived from Master's thesis of counseling in Midwifery in the School of Nursing and Midwifery in Zahedan; thereby the authors thank the Deputy Minister for Research and Technology in ZAUMS.

Authors' contributions

All the authors contributed to the conceptualization and development of the study and the interpretation of the data, and they all reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final draft. AN supervised the study.