Psychosocial Impacts of Traumatic Child Birth on Women: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Although, a significant proportion of births are uneventful, a proportion of them cause significant distress to mother, midwife and/or child. Traumatic childbirth is often extremely distress for mothers and has been associated with an increased risk of maternal mental health disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder following childbirth. This study explores the factors influencing traumatic births in addition to its impact on both mothers and midwives. It also aims to identify preventive and therapeutic measures to prevent and mitigate traumatic births. This study uses a systematic literature review approach to answer the questions of this research. The SALSA framework and the PRISMA flowchart were used to identify and appraise potential studies. A total of 21 studies were included in the review following implementation of the inclusion and exclusion criteria of this study.

This study found that healthcare-related factors, patient-related factors, and difficult deliveries are factors that affect the traumatic childbirths. The impact of traumatic childbirth on mothers and midwives were found to be far-reaching and highly detrimental to the healthcare delivery at large. This study found PTSD specific therapies such as EMDR to be useful in the treatment of PTSD following childbirth while strategies such as the magical hour were found to be preventative as well as therapeutic in traumatic births.