Journal article
Women's experiences of attempted suicide in the perinatal period (ASPEN-study) - a qualitative study
- Abstract:
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Background
Suicide is a leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the year after birth (the perinatal period). While maternal suicide is a relatively rare event with a prevalence of 3.84 per 100,000 live births in the UK, the impact of maternal suicide is profound and long-lasting. Many more women will attempt suicide during the perinatal period, with a worldwide estimated prevalence of 680 per 100,000 in pregnancy and 210 per 100,000 in the year after birth. Qualitative research into perinatal suicide attempts is crucial to understand the experiences, motives and the circumstances surrounding these events, but this has largely been unexplored.
Aim
Our study aimed to explore the experiences of women and birthing people who had a perinatal suicide attempt and to understand the context and contributing factors surrounding their perinatal suicide attempt.
Methods
Through iterative feedback from a group of women with lived experience of perinatal mental illness and relevant stakeholders, a qualitative study design was developed. We recruited women and birthing people (N = 11) in the UK who self-reported as having undertaken a suicide attempt. Interviews were conducted virtually, recorded and transcribed. Using NVivo software, a critical realist approach to Thematic Analysis was followed, and themes were developed.
Results
Three key themes were identified that contributed to the perinatal suicide attempt. The first theme 'Trauma and Adversities' captures the traumatic events and life adversities with which participants started their pregnancy journeys. The second theme, 'Disillusionment with Motherhood' brings together a range of sub-themes highlighting various challenges related to pregnancy, birth and motherhood resulting in a decline in women's mental health. The third theme, 'Entrapment and Despair', presents a range of factors that leads to a significant deterioration of women's mental health, marked by feelings of failure, hopelessness and losing control.
Conclusions
Feelings of entrapment and despair in women who are struggling with motherhood, alongside a background of traumatic events and life adversities may indicate warning signs of a perinatal suicide. Meaningful enquiry around these factors could lead to timely detection, thus improving care and potentially prevent future maternal suicides.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Supplementary materials, pdf, 168.5KB, Terms of use)
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12888-024-05686-3
Authors
+ National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/015ah0c92
- Grant:
- NIHR302565
- NIHR200152
- NIHR-INF-2170
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Psychiatry More from this journal
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 255
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2024-04-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-03-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-244X
- Pmid:
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38570802
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1989628
- Local pid:
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pubs:1989628
- Deposit date:
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2025-05-01
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- De Backer et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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