Memories as vectors of distress
Intrusive memories of a traumatic birth have a strong impact on a mother’s health. A study analyses the link with post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Situations can occur during childbirth that traumatise women. | Photo: iStock
“Intrusive memories after a traumatic birth are varied and often multisensory”, says Déborah Fort, a psychologist at the end of her doctorate at the University of Lausanne. She has been working to characterise these post-traumatic stress symptoms which are little documented in this context. Her study looked at 299 intrusive memories – painful images, sensations or emotions that come back involuntarily – recorded over 14 days by 44 women who had experienced a traumatic birth.
She was then able to identify six categories of memory and flashback. They relate to the physiological process of childbirth, e.g., pain or contractions; medical procedures; fear, anger, or other negative emotions; the perception of complications; stressful interactions; and finally the physical environment: operating or recovery rooms. “These categories could be useful reference points during consultation, which would speed up the identification of mothers in distress and the offer of appropriate support,” says Fort.
Antje Horsch is an associate professor at the University Institute of Training and Research in Care of the University of Lausanne and affiliated with the Woman-Mother-Child Department of the CHUV. She sees this as “a public health issue. According to international estimates, a third of women – all countries, cultures, health systems combined – believe they’ve experienced a traumatic labour”.
It’s all the more important to restore the “central place of this subjective experience” – after all, a birth can be objectively free from obstetric complication, but perceived as traumatic – as 12 percent of women who have given birth develop post-traumatic stress symptoms. What’s more is that they are comparable to those observed in people who have experienced other traumas, e.g., aggression or armed conflict, says Horsch. “Distress, exacerbated by the impression that memories unfold here and now, is no different”, says Fort.
