Abstract
ABSTRACT

Background: Women are profoundly responsive to stress in early pregnancy. Around 25% of women report emotional distress and antenatal period. Instant mental impact of miscarriage revealed a considerable fraction of women meet the criteria for depression and anxiety.
Aim: To determine stress among women after 1st trimester miscarriage.
Material &Method: Study was descriptive cross-sectional. Data of 162 women was collected from Jinnah hospital Lahore by providing IES-R (Revised Impact of Events Scale) and GHQ-12 (General Health Questionnaire) questionnaire providing information regarding avoidance, intrusion and hyper arousal.
Results: The mean age of women including in this study was 25.53 ± 5.46. 43.1% women who have no children before miscarriage having clinically concern PTSD while 38.5% women having stress level of high enough to suppress immune system function. 14.6% women who have children before miscarriage having normal stress level after miscarriage. Having children before miscarriage have significantly impact on stress level (<0.001). Psychological distress, cognitive disorder and GHQ was not statistically significantly different in female who have no children as compared to female who have child/children (p-value>0.05).
Conclusion: It is concluded from this study that the women who experience miscarriage were undergoing mild to moderate level of depression in term of its effect on routine work or in term of their lifestyle. Mostly women behave normally or moderate after miscarriage while other experienced significant stress.

Key words: Depression, stress, anxiety, pregnancy.