A systematic review regarding women’s emotional and psychological experiences of high-risk pregnancies

BACKGROUND: High-risk pregnancy refers to a pregnancy that negatively affects the health of the mother, the baby, or both. High-risk pregnancy evokes a range of emotional and psychological experiences for the expectant mother, and can adversely affect both the mother and the baby’s health. Medical research on high-risk pregnancy abounds, while women’s emotional/psychological experiences are not sufficiently documented, and hence much less attention and/or programming is directed to support women with high risk pregnancies. METHODS: The aim of this review is to present published evidence of how studies reported on the emotional and psychological experiences of a woman’s high-risk pregnancy journey. The systematic review examined qualitative studies over a 10 year period that were published between January 2006 and June 2017. These studies were identified on 10 databases. The study utilised three stages of review (i.e. abstract reading, title reading, and full-text reading) and for a successful conduction of the meta-synthesis, this study applied one of the phases provided by Noblit and Hare. RESULTS: The findings provide empirical evidence that women’s emotional and psychological experiences (i.e. shock, fear, frustration, grief, isolation and loneliness, anger, sadness, guilt, and mental health disorder) are evident throughout their high-risk pregnancies experience.