Postnatal debriefing is offered by 78% of maternity services in the UK despite little evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that it is effective. RCTs in this area have applied debriefing as a prophylactic to all or high risk women, rather than as a treatment for women who request it. This pragmatic trial therefore evaluated existing postnatal debriefing services that provide debriefing as a treatment for women who request it. Forty-six women who met criterion A for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and requested debriefing 1.3-72.2 months (median 16 weeks) postpartum completed measures of depression, PTSD, support and negative appraisals of the birth before and one month after debriefing. Women were compared with others who gave birth in the same hospitals during the same time period (n=34), who met criterion A for PTSD but had not requested debriefing. Results showed PTSD symptoms reduced over time in both groups but greater decreases were observed in women who attended debriefing. Debriefing also led to reduction in negative appraisals but did not affect symptoms of depression. Therefore, results suggest providing debriefing as a treatment to women who request or are referred to it may help to reduce symptoms of PTSD.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 65. 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 09 September 2026.
All research outputs
#839,481
of 34,518,147 outputs
Outputs from Behaviour Research & Therapy
#155
of 3,324 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2,697
of 161,366 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Behaviour Research & Therapy
#3
of 20 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,518,147 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,324 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 16.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
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 161,366 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
