Midwives have a primary role in facilitating the first stage of perinatal mental health risk reduction through inquiring about perinatal mental health, identifying risk factors and current perinatal mental health problems, providing support or crisis intervention, referring for treatment and decreasing stigmatisation.
The aims of this study were to determine midwives' (a) knowledge of and confidence to identify and manage perinatal mental health problems, (b) attitudes towards women who experience severe mental illness and (c) perceived learning needs.
A cross-sectional survey design.
The study was conducted between September 2016 and April 2017 in seven Maternity services in the Republic of Ireland with a purposeful non-random convenience sample of midwives (n=157). Data was anonymously collected utilising the Perinatal Mental Health Questionnaire, the Mental Illness: Clinician's Attitudes scale and the Perinatal Mental Health Learning Needs questionnaire.
Midwives indicated high levels of knowledge (71.1%) and confidence (72%) in identifying women who experience depression and anxiety however, they reported less confidence in caring (43.9%) for women. Only 17.8% (n=28) of midwives felt equipped to support women whilst 15.3% (n=24) reported having access to sufficient information. Midwives desire education on the spectrum of perinatal mental health problems. The mean score for the Mental Illness: Clinician's Attitudes scale was 36.31 (SD=7.60), indicating positive attitudes towards women with severe mental illness.
Midwives require further education on perinatal mental health across cultures with a skill focus and which explores attitudes delivered in a study day format.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 November 2018.
All research outputs
#10,942,215
of 34,039,688 outputs
Outputs from Women & Birth
#750
of 1,444 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#166,619
of 500,036 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Women & Birth
#10
of 25 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,039,688 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,444 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.4. This one is in the 47th percentile – i.e., 47% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 500,036 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 25 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 60% of its contemporaries.
