[The trauma of miscarriage--factors influencing the experience of anxiety after early pregnancy loss]

Abstract

The experience of miscarriage results in tremendous emotional disturbance for many affected women. Depression, anxiety, (pathological) grief, and posttraumatic stress symptoms are commonly experienced reactions. Several factors influence the level of emotional distress, like age, previous experience of miscarriage, or social support. In this work, we investigated the level of emotional distress after miscarriage using a novel methodological approach. Through the world wide web, N = 500 texts of women who reported freely on their miscarriage were accessed and analyzed using the Dresden Anxiety Dictionary, a German computerized version of the Gottschalk-Gleser speech analysis. The women were 28 years old on average. The texts were written, on average, about 28 days after the miscarriage. Women's pregnancy had lasted between 2 and 40 weeks (M = 12). The scores pertaining to death anxiety and mutilation anxiety were higher than the norm. More than 20 % of the women reported an increased level of anxiety. Variables that influenced the level of anxiety were age, time since miscarriage, duration of pregnancy, previous miscarriage, and social support. The results underscore the need for treatment, at least for sub-groups of affected women who have a higher risk for a complicated course of coping with miscarriage.