The death of a baby during pregnancy (stillbirth) or soon after birth (neonatal death) is a devastating outcome with lasting social and emotional consequences for parents, families and care providers, and wide‐ranging impacts on health systems and society. Each year an estimated 2 million babies are stillborn at 28 weeks’ gestation or more and a further 2.4 million babies die in the first month after birth. Stillbirth and neonatal death rates are a key indicator of women’s health and a sensitive marker of the quality of care around pregnancy and birth.
The quality of care and support parents and families receive around the time a baby dies is a major contributor to their immediate and longer‐term wellbeing. Grief is an expected and normal response to perinatal death, and parents often also report intense sadness, anxiety, and anger. Parents may experience disenfranchised grief, where their loss is not understood or socially acknowledged or validated by others, along with societal stigma, and feelings of guilt and shame. Parents are also at increased risk of adverse mental health outcomes such as co‐occurring generalised anxiety, major depressive, post‐traumatic stress, and prolonged grief disorders.
This project aims to identify and assess the effect of support interventions focused on psychological, social, and emotional outcomes for bereaved parents and family members of parents who have experienced stillbirth or neonatal death.
This study protocol has been published here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11559470/
Level 3, Aubigny Place
Mater Research Institute
Raymond Terrace,
South Brisbane QLD 4101
The University of Queensland Faculty of Medicine