BACKGROUND: Women with abuse-related post-traumatic stress who are pregnant experience symptoms that nurses and midwives may not recognize or know how to respond to. AIM: The purpose of this article is to increase familiarity with the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnostic framework by illustrating the symptom categories and associated features with women's descriptions of the symptoms from qualitative interviews. METHODS: A secondary analysis was performed with data from a qualitative interview study of the maternity care experiences of 15 American women who had abuse-related post-traumatic stress during pregnancy. Content analysis was used to extract all participant statements describing how post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and associated features manifested in pregnancy. These were then juxtaposed with the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnostic framework. RESULTS: Participants' interviews included a range of descriptions of the intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and hyperarousal core symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as associated psychological features such as somatization, dissociation and interpersonal sensitivity, and associated behavioural features such as substance abuse, disordered eating, high-risk sexual behaviours, suicidality, and revictimization. CONCLUSIONS: Limitations of this study include that it is a secondary analysis, using a small North American sample, and focusing only on abuse-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Descriptive information from this qualitative study may bridge the gaps between psychiatric technical language, women's subjective experiences, and clinicians' perceptions of a woman's post-traumatic stress reactions.
BACKGROUND:Women with abuse-related post-traumatic stress who are pregnant experience symptoms that nurses and midwives may not recognize or know how to respond to. AIM: The purpose of this article is to increase familiarity with the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnostic framework by illustrating the symptom categories and associated features with women's descriptions of the symptoms from qualitative interviews. METHODS: A secondary analysis was performed with data from a qualitative interview study of the maternity care experiences of 15 American women who had abuse-related post-traumatic stress during pregnancy. Content analysis was used to extract all participant statements describing how post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and associated features manifested in pregnancy. These were then juxtaposed with the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnostic framework. RESULTS:Participants' interviews included a range of descriptions of the intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and hyperarousal core symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as associated psychological features such as somatization, dissociation and interpersonal sensitivity, and associated behavioural features such as substance abuse, disordered eating, high-risk sexual behaviours, suicidality, and revictimization. CONCLUSIONS: Limitations of this study include that it is a secondary analysis, using a small North American sample, and focusing only on abuse-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Descriptive information from this qualitative study may bridge the gaps between psychiatric technical language, women's subjective experiences, and clinicians' perceptions of a woman's post-traumatic stress reactions.