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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1530311
This article is part of the Research Topic Integrating Health Psychology in Practice: Enhancing Well-being and Improving Health Outcomes Across Diverse Contexts View all 7 articles
Comparative efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions on fear of childbirth for pregnant women: A systematic review and network meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted- West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
To explore effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions in fear of childbirth.All published literature were searched from three databases (Pubmed, Cochrane CENTRAL, and Web of Science) as of April 2024. The risk of bias of the included studies was assessed using the Cochrane Systematic Review Manual 2.0 bias risk assessment tool. The primary outcome was FOC, the secondary outcomes were depression, anxiety, stress, childbirth self-efficacy, and mode of delivery.This study included 32 randomized controlled trials, involving 17 interventions and 3187 pregnant women. Compared with usual care, cognitive-behavioral therapy(SMD = -1.62, 95%CI -2.47 to -0.66), haptonomy (SMD = -1.43, 95%CI -2.63 to -0.24) , motivational interview(SMD = -1.35, 95%CI -2.35 to -0.35), counseling therapy(SMD = -1.08, 95%CI -1.91 to -0.25) statistically and significantly improved fear of childbirth in gestational period. Emotional freedom technique(SMD = -3.13, 95%CI -5.00 to -1.26), counseling therapy (SMD = -1.81, 95%CI -2.97 to -0.80), haptonomy(SMD = -1.78, 95%CI -2.89 to -0.66), cognitive-behavioral therapy(SMD = -1.42, 95%CI -2.53 to -0.32), motivational interview(SMD = -1.28, 95%CI -2.37 to -0.19) statistically and significantly improved fear of childbirth in postnatal period. The cluster analysis 2 showed that emotional freedom technique, haptonomy, motivational interview, cognitive-behavioral therapy, counseling therapy were considered to be more effective non-pharmacological interventions.Several non-pharmacological interventions are promising in the daily care of pregnant women with fear of childbirth. Healthcare professionals should be encouraged to apply these non-pharmacological interventions for informal caregivers of pregnant women with fear of childbirth.
Keywords: non-pharmacological interventions, Fear of childbirth, FOC, Pregnant Women, Network meta-analysis
Received: 18 Nov 2024; Accepted: 19 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Zhu, Li, Guo and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dehua Li, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
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