The Importance of Accessing Professional Support Before, During, and After a Miscarriage

A miscarriage is a traumatic event that can seriously affect a women’s mental health. Miscarriage impacts approximately 15% of all pregnancies and has a significant impact on a women’s mental health, often leading to perinatal grief symptoms. Women may experience emotional numbness, a yearning for the lost child, battle with difficult emotions and struggle to find meaning. Some women recover more rapidly than others from the psychological burden of a miscarriage. Why?

A recent study considered the impact that accessing professional, supportive health care has on a women’s recovery. And the results confirmed that access to, and the quality of, healthcare services for women going through a miscarriage might directly influence their mental health in the following months and even years.

For women who did not access, or found their healthcare services unhelpful, there were no differences in their perinatal grief symptoms across time.

For women who accessed quality healthcare services, their perinatal grief symptoms decreased since their miscarriage and were significantly lower among women who had miscarried more than 2 years ago.

The need to optimize healthcare services offered to women before, during, and after a miscarriage, has never been clearer.

I can offer you the opportunity to;

  • talk with someone whose role it is to listen without judgment;

  • validate your experience;

  • receive reassurance and support;

  • process your grief;

  • find strategies and skills to cope with your thoughts, feelings and situations you may be finding stressful;

  • a safe, caring and confidential environment.

We must pay attention to ourselves, our family and friends, offer them support, and encourage them to link in with quality health care services.

 

 

The study referred to can be found at;

deMontigny, F., Verdon, C., Meunier, S., & Dubeau, D. (2017). Women's persistent depressive and perinatal grief symptoms following a miscarriage: The role of childlessness and satisfaction with healthcare services. Archives of Women's Mental Health, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00737-017-0742-9