Face the scientific literature relating to traumatic consequences of childbirth It means understanding the existence of a submerged world of cases of psychological suffering not identified and often not taken care of by the health system. Over the past 20 years numerous studies have highlighted high post-partum psychological traumatization indices.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the percentage of women who report traumatic experiences during childbirth varies from 20 to 33%.
Anxiety disorders in the period following childbirth are also more frequent than depressive symptoms with 16% of patients who meet the diagnosis of panic disorders, phobias, adaptation disorders or post -traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) associated with the event itself.
A subsequent revision of literature confirms that in the United Kingdom almost 10% of women in the post-natal period present serious responses from post-traumatic stress (flashbacks, night nightmares, inability to approach hospitals or pregnant women) and 1-2% of them come to develop a real PTSD.
Other investigations conducted on even wider champions have found-in association with anxiety and post-traumatic symptoms- Problems in the sexual sphere (compared with the period preceding the birth) with a profound impairment also in the quality of intimate and sentimental relationships with the partner.
The peri-natal risk factors identified in the literature are: complications after natural childbirth, the use of emergency procedures such as forkpers/suction cups, low use of analgesics and a high degree of pain perceived by the partorient. The medical complications during childbirth and the risk for the health of the newborn are also greater risk factors for trauma in partners (Fathers) who witness childbirth.
Despite the appeal of the World Health Organization (WHO) to the integration of mental health programs within the health care offered to the mothers before and after childbirth, the fundamental question still seems to revolve around the difficulty of recognizing childbirth as a potentially traumatic event.
However, signs of a new awareness in this area seem to emerge recently, even by the patients themselves.
In particular, in our country the same citizens are promoting initiatives aimed at enhancing the psychological needs of the future mother: among all, the #Bastatarere campaign emerges (following the previous initiative #breakthesilence launched by the international Human Rights network in Childbirth) to give voice to all women who, traumatized during childbirth, believe they have not been respected in their fundamental patients.
Humiliated women, abused and derise or simply not adequately informed about the medical procedures they were meeting … women who could not elaborate their emotional experiences intense (triggered by difficult or painful parts) because they are not welcomed or protected by the medical-health figures around them, crystallizing the traumatic experience itself.
Starting from all this in Italy, a bill for the recognition of the crime of obstetric violence and the respective compensable damage has recently been filed.
Without minimizing the importance of the legal recognition of a right injured in a patient, the fundamental question seems to be the need for greater awareness of childbirth as an extremely delicate moment in which, beyond the immense joy for the birth of a child, they can also incur risks to physical and psychological health of mother and child.
Only in this way could we begin to implement projects faces not only to recognize the damage that occurred and punish medical or obstetric responsibilities, but also to prevent and inform about the issue of Post-traumatic psychological suffering connected to childbirth. Only in this way could we pay our attention to the risk factors, the early signals and the subjective indicators of post-partum trauma. And only in this way could we intervene early on the mental health of the patients and the quality of the mother-neoned relationship that we know be the fundamental basis for the psycho-physical well-being of the child himself.
