‘Miscarriage’ is the term used to describe the loss of pregnancy during the first 23 weeks. Miscarriage occurs in 15-30% of pregnancies, affecting 70,000–90,000 women in the United Kingdom (UK) each year. Experiencing miscarriage can be very traumatic. One in five women and one in twelve men suffer depression, anxiety and/or post-traumatic stress disorder following miscarriage. However, mental health support after miscarriage is not routinely offered by healthcare services
Miscarriage ‘peer support’ links people with experience of miscarriage with others who have also experienced miscarriage, to provide support, hope and encouragement. Research evidence has shown that peer support after miscarriage can be helpful to parents (mothers and/or their partners) in reducing mental trauma. There are many different types of miscarriage peer support. It is currently not clear which types of support are most helpful, or if some types of support are more helpful to some people than others.
This study will explore the evidence-base around peer support after miscarriage, in relation to mental health outcomes. An evidence synthesis, including a call-for-evidence, will be combined with a series of qualitative interviews with peer support recipients and peer supporters.
What is the effectiveness of peer support interventions to improve mental health outcomes for parents after miscarriage and what are the barriers to, and facilitators of these interventions to the population?
This will be answered through work across two work packages, as follows:
Work Package 1: Evidence Synthesis
Evidence synthesis methodology will be used to locate, appraise, and synthesise evidence, where available, on both effectiveness, and barriers and facilitators to implementation, with input from a network of experts in the field, through a call-for-evidence.
Work Package 2: Qualitative Interview Study
We will share a summary of the evidence with people who provide miscarriage peer support and people who have been offered miscarriage peer support, to compare what we have found with their personal experiences of support. We will interview 20 people who provide miscarriage peer support and 30 mothers and 10 different partners. We will seek a wide range of views from people including, providers from different NHS and charity organisations, and parents, aged 18 or older, who have experienced either a single or multiple miscarriage(s), within the last two years.
The results from this project will provide a detailed list of miscarriage peer support services that are currently available and a summary of provider and parents views about how easy or not it is to access and take part in miscarriage peer support and its impact on mental trauma following miscarriage. This information will be important to policymakers, miscarriage support providers and parents who experience miscarriage. With the help of our Public Advisory Group, we will make sure that these results are shared with different people who have different interests in the findings. We will use different methods to share these findings to make sure that the findings are shared and understood by as many people as possible.
