Perspectives in the grief of a newborn child death

Abstract

Although death is a daily event in medicine, the psychological events that it bears and the human confrontation of it has not been studied frequently with scientific rigor. 25 years ago, faced with the death of a newborn child, it was recommended that the mother should not have contact with the baby, to administer sedatives to the family to avoid all emotional manifestations, not to speak of the subject, to forget the baby and to have other children. The present recommendations are exactly the opposite, but although there is more objective information, sometimes systematically obtained, there are only a few controlled studies. In general, many clinical guidelines are based on qualitative reports of the grief of a few parents and the opinions of specialists such as psychiatrists or psychotherapists. The objective of this article, based on literature review and the clinical experience of the authors, is to suggest guidelines that facilitates the support of the parents facing the death of their newborn child, based on the present knowledge available.