Integrated care for pregnant women with psychiatric and psychosocial problems; patients’ and healthcare providers’ perspectives
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background Perinatal psychiatric and psychosocial problems lead to a higher risk of negative outcomes for mother and child. Treatment is challenging, due to barriers on patient, provider, and system level. Multidisciplinary integrated care, as provided by Dutch POP (Psychiatry-Obstetrics-Paediatrics) -outpatient clinics, can help to overcome these challenges. This study aims to investigate the compliance with and the experiences with a POP-outpatient clinic from patients’ and POP-specialists’ perspectives.Methods All women registered at the POP-outpatient clinic at Medical Centre Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) over an interval of 8 months were eligible for retrospective data-analysis to examine retention and adherence rates, to examine compliance. To explore experiences, semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients (purposive sampling) and POP-specialists (full population sampling). Descriptive statistics and inductive thematic analysis were performed.Results Of all patients (n = 103), the retention and adherence rates were 86.4% and 65.0%. Analysis of patients’ interviews (n = 8) showed various themes: (1) meeting needs by personalised care, (2) importance of (multidisciplinary) communication (3) more barriers experienced by more frequent healthcare users. Analysis of POP-specialists’ interviews (n = 7) showed the following themes: (1) importance of personalised care, (2) focus on prevention (3) limitations due to lack of continuity of care.Conclusion This study supports the acceptability of the (MCL-)POP-outpatient clinic. Patients and POP-specialists underscore the need of personalised care. While patients also find communication and a trustful relationship with the healthcare professional important, POP-specialists are more inclined to focus on social context and prevention. These different views provide ground for future research on multidisciplinary care in perinatal mental healthcare.
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7142222398