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Helping health care staff deal with perinatal loss
Author(s) -
Defey Denise
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
infant mental health journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1097-0355
pISSN - 0163-9641
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0355(199522)16:2<102::aid-imhj2280160205>3.0.co;2-t
Subject(s) - feeling , psychological intervention , psychology , nursing , flexibility (engineering) , mental health , distress , humanities , psychotherapist , medicine , social psychology , management , philosophy , economics
Dealing with the psychological issues involved in perinatal loss exposes the medical, nursing, and midwifery staff not only to parents' distress but also their own feelings of impotence and frustration. This often leads to inadequate management of the situation, which may have long–term deleterious effects on parents and affect staff personally and professionally. Thus, mental health professionals should not only address their interventions to parents, but to staff as well, potentiating the latter's role as mental health providers. The skills needed for this kind of task involve creativity and flexibility, as well as the capacity to adapt traditional training to the active participation needed in dealing with perinatal loss. The present paper is based upon the author's 15 years' experience in consultatiodliaison in this field and describes the work carried out based on case discussion, group work, and, specially, video–recorded interviews with parents and staff accompanied by written material providing guidelines for management.