Impact of Perinatal Death on the Social and Family Context of the Parents

Cayetano Fernández-Sola, Marcos Camacho-Ávila, José Manuel Hernández-Padilla, Isabel María Fernández-Medina, Francisca Rosa Jiménez-López, Encarnación Hernández-Sánchez, María Belén Conesa-Ferrer and José Granero-Molina
Additional contact information
Cayetano Fernández-Sola: Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine, University of Almeria, 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain
Marcos Camacho-Ávila: Hospital La Inmaculada, 04600 Huércal-Overa, Spain
José Manuel Hernández-Padilla: Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine, University of Almeria, 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain
Isabel María Fernández-Medina: Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine, University of Almeria, 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain
Francisca Rosa Jiménez-López: Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine, University of Almeria, 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain
Encarnación Hernández-Sánchez: Hospital de Torrevieja, 03186 Torrevieja, Spain
María Belén Conesa-Ferrer: Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad de Murcia, 30003 Murcia, Spain
José Granero-Molina: Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine, University of Almeria, 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: Background: Perinatal death (PD) is a painful experience, with physical, psychological and social consequences in families. Each year, there are 2.7 million perinatal deaths in the world and about 2000 in Spain. The aim of this study was to explore, describe and understand the impact of perinatal death on parents’ social and family life. Methods: A qualitative study based on Gadamer’s hermeneutic phenomenology was used. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 mothers and eight fathers who had suffered a perinatal death. Inductive analysis was used to find themes based on the data. Results: Seven sub-themes emerged, and they were grouped into two main themes: 1) perinatal death affects family dynamics, and 2) the social environment of the parents is severely affected after perinatal death. Conclusions: PD impacts the family dynamics of the parents and their family, social and work environments. Parents perceive that society trivializes their loss and disallows or delegitimizes their grief. Implications: Social care, health and education providers should pay attention to all family members who have suffered a PD. The recognition of the loss within the social and family environment would help the families to cope with their grief.

Keywords: perinatal death; perinatal grief; disenfranchised grief; qualitative research; parents care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/10/3421/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/10/3421/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:10:p:3421-:d:357993

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().