What is it about?
Is debriefing more or less effective than standard postnatal care in preventing psychological trauma among women who have recently given birth
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Why is it important?
Having a baby is a complex life event. While many women view their experiences of giving birth as very positive, childbirth can sometimes be experienced as a traumatic event. If a birth is experienced as traumatic, it could have a negative impact on a woman's long-term emotional well-being. Relationships between mother and child may be affected, as can the women's relationships with other family members. One intervention that is commonly used with the aim of reducing psychological trauma (that is anxiety, trauma or depressive symptoms) and preventing the development of post-traumatic stress disorder following birth is debriefing. Debriefing includes a variety of post-birth discussions that provide women an opportunity to talk about their birth experience. In this review we examined the evidence for debriefing as a preventative intervention for psychological trauma following childbirth.
Perspectives
We did not find any high quality evidence to inform practice, with substantial heterogeneity being found between the studies conducted to date. There is little or no evidence to support either a positive or adverse effect of psychological debriefing for the prevention of psychological trauma in women following childbirth. There is no evidence to support routine debriefing for women who perceive giving birth as psychologically traumatic. Future research should provide greater detail of the outcome measures used, and with scales for measuring psychological trauma validated against clinical diagnostic interviews. High rates of obstetric intervention in some birth settings may mean that women require improved emotional care from health professionals to reduce the risk of childbirth being experienced as traumatic. As all included trials excluded women unable to communicate in the native language of the study setting, there is no information on the response of these women to psychological debriefing. No included studies were conducted in low or middle-income countries
Dr Maria Helena S Bastos
Ministry of Health
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Debriefing interventions for the prevention of psychological trauma in women following childbirth, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, April 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/14651858.cd007194.pub2.
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