Development of Psychic Pain in the Context of Microcephaly and Abortion: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Background: In the year of 2015, evidence of a relation between Zika virus and the development of microcephaly in pregnant women who acquired the infection started to come up. Thus, it is extremely necessary that the analysis of the affliction affects these women in a biopsychosocial context, in order to discuss and comprehend in a more reliable manner the affection from the perception of the disease, origin, and psychic pain mechanisms. Methods: Systematic review with meta-analysis, using the PRISMA protocol. The study period was 2016 and the keywords included "microcephaly" and "abortion", one at a time and then combined with the Boolean operator "AND." The statistical analysis was done using the BioEstat 5.0 program. Calculation was based on an adjustment of Mantel-Haenszel random effect. Results: 41,046 registrations were found. Of this total, 40,992 articles were excluded because they only mentioned the fact or referred to spontaneous abortion, did not analyze abortion on the eyes of microcephaly, only treated with Zika virus, or were repeated. Limitations: Psychic pain and suffering need studies in the mother/son/disease relation, which were not found in the databases. The article was based on other sources. Conclusions: The pains vary in different areas of the female life, since internal conflicts, gender violence, stress, fear, insecurity, psychologic torture, grieve, loneliness, among other kinds of psychic suffering. More studies on psycho-emotional themes need to be pro- 377moted to discuss the female suffering on a wider vision, closer to the reality faced by these women.