Relação entre o estresse e o coping religioso-espiritual de gestantes com fetos malformados

Abstract

Introduction: Pregnancy is a period of intense physiological and emotional changes in women, which leads to psychic changes, mainly when it is related to some congenital malformations, a stressful factor in which several pregnant women use their religion and/or spirituality as forms of coping. Objective: To correlate religious/spiritual coping (SRC) with the stress perceived in pregnant women with birth defects babies. As well as relate the belief in a miracle to the type of RSC. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study which was conducted at the fetal medicine outpatient department of the Mother and Infant Hospital of Brasília (HMIB). The data collection was performed in November 2018 to July 2019. Was convenience sample that include all pregnant women with fetal malformation and excluded tha pregnant women functional illiterate. The finally sample was composed by 99 pregnant. The scale of Pargament et al. (2000) was used to measure the SRC, the stress assessment was based on the Perceived Stress Scale of Cohen et al. (1983), both validated and translated to into Portuguese by Panzini and Bandeira (2005) and Luft et al. (2007), and was applied socio-economic questionnaire, made for lead author. For statistical analysis, we used means, standard deviations, and frequencies, Chi-Square and Logistic Regression tests, Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation, using the software SPSS-IBM 22.0. Results: The mean age was of 29,36 ± 7,32 (17−46), the mostly single (55/55,6%), and with hight school (46/ 47,5%), resident in satellite city (65/65,7%). The major congenital malformation was diagnosed in second trimester of pregnancy (64/64,6%) and de prognosis of the malformation was 33 (33,3%) variable risk and 31(31%) lethal . Of pregnant women with congenital malformations, 92.8% presented positive religious/spiritual coping (SRC), the mean perceived stress was 41.17 ± 9.03, with an inverse ratio between perceived stress and SRC (p = 0.02). Socio-epidemiological and a clinical data, such as the interval of diagnosis and data collection, the gestational age of the diagnosis, the prognosis of the malformation, age, religion don’t influence the identication of pregnant women with high stress and negative religious coping (p=0,33) Of the sample, 90% prayed for a miracle and 81% had RSC. In the sample, praying for a miracle presented statistical importance with all factors whose RSC was subdivided, and only two factors of negative SRC. Conclusion: The present research has proven that religion and spirituality are a means to cope with the high degree of stress of pregnancy with congenital malformations, where SRC is a protective factor. Praying for a miracle, in this sample, has shown positive aspects in coping with congenital malformations by the pregnant woman, since the act of prayer can represent hope for the congenital malformations to be reframed in the psychism of the pregnant woman.