Background: Psychological birth trauma has persistent adverse effects on the performance and health of women during and after childbirth. Therefore, Interventions to prevent and mitigate psychological birth trauma are of paramount importance.
Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the effects of counseling based on Gamble's approach on psychological birth trauma in primiparous women.
Materials and methods: This randomized clinical trial was conducted on 60 primiparous women referring to the health centers in Mashhad, Iran in 2018. In the intervention group, counseling was provided by an obstetrician based on Gamble's strategy to each participant in three sessions before delivery and one session postpartum. The participants in the control group only received routine prenatal care. Data were collected using demographic and obstetrics characteristics questionnaire and psychological birth trauma questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS, version 21 and chi-square and independent t-test. p-value less than .05 was considered significant.
Results: The mean age of the women in the intervention and control groups was 23.3 ± 3.9 and 24.4 ± 4.4, and the mean prenatal age upon delivery was 40.8 ± 5.7 and 39.8 ± 1.2 weeks respectively. The mean score of psychological birth trauma in the intervention (counseling) and control groups was 37.2 ± 10.4 and 47.6 ± 16.3, respectively, which was significantly lower in the intervention group (p = .003).
Conclusion: According to the results, counseling based on Gamble's approach could reduce psychological birth trauma in primiparous women. Therefore, this effective, simple, cost-effective, and harmless approach could be employed to reduce intrapartum and postpartum maternal traumas and prevent adverse events for the mother and the newborn.
Keywords: Counseling; primiparous women; psychological birth trauma.