Follow-up for improving psychological well being for women after a miscarriage

Routine councelling after a miscarriage may not be effective for improving psychological well being.

Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by inconsistency (unexplained variability in results).

Summary

A Cochrane review included 6 studies with a total of 1001 subjects. There was no significant difference in psychological well being including anxiety, grief, depression avoidance and self-blame in 3 trials (n=236) comparing one counselling session with no counselling. In one trial (n=242) comparing three one-hour counselling sessions with no counselling at four and 12 months, some subscales showed statistical significance in favour of counselling and some in favour of no counselling. The results for two trials were given in narrative form as data were unavailable for meta-analyses. One trial compared multiple interventions. The other trial compared two counselling sessions with no counselling. Neither study favoured counselling. In all studies the interventions were delivered by different professional groups including a midwife, psychologists and nurses. Timing of the interventions varied from one week following miscarriage up to 11 weeks.

Clinical comments

Date of latest search: 31 December 2011

Ədəbiyyat

1. Murphy FA, Lipp A, Powles DL. Follow-up for improving psychological well being for women after a miscarriage. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2012;3:CD008679.