Background: Pregnancy is a very important period in the development of attachment.
Objective: To determine the correlation between prenatal attachment levels of healthy pregnant women and their styles of coping with stress and those of high-risk pregnant women.
Method: This descriptive study consisted of 76 women in their third-trimester of pregnancy hospitalised at the Obstetrics and Gynaecology service at a hospital and 210 women in their third-trimester of pregnancy who were experiencing a healthy pregnancy process and admitted to the Gynaecology Outpatient Clinic for pregnancy follow-up. The data were collected with the Personal Information Form, the Prenatal Attachment Inventory and the Stress Coping Styles Scale.
Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the prenatal attachment levels of healthy and high-risk pregnant women. There was a positive correlation between the prenatal attachment levels and the self-confident and optimistic approaches among the styles of coping with stress in the healthy and high-risk pregnant women .
Conclusion: The attachment levels of the high-risk pregnant women were higher than were those of the healthy pregnant women. As the use of the self-confident and optimistic approach styles in coping with stress increases among healthy and high-risk pregnant women, so do their prenatal attachment levels.
Keywords: Pregnancy; high-risk pregnant women; prenatal attachment; styles of coping with stress.