Research | Search for research projects | Cochrane systematic review update: Support for parents and families after stillbirth and neonatal death

Cochrane systematic review update: Support for parents and families after stillbirth and neonatal death

Project Status In Progress
Organisation Lead Stillbirth CRE
Lead Investigator Siobhan Loughnan
Program Area Implementing Best Practice In Care After Stillbirth And In Subsequent Pregnancies
Topic Implementing Optimal Parent-centred Care Following Perinatal Death

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/

Western Pacific Regional Office of the International Stillbirth Alliance
Coordinating Centre, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Alliance, Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand

Level 3, Aubigny Place
Mater Research Institute
Raymond Terrace,
South Brisbane QLD 4101
The University of Queensland Faculty of Medicine

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