Abstract
Background: Despite evidence that loneliness increases during times of transition, and that the incidence of loneliness is highest in young adults, loneliness during pregnancy and new parenthood has not been developed as a program of research. Because loneliness research has primarily focused on older adults and other high-risk populations, the concept of loneliness and its effects on this population are not well understood, leaving a gap in our understanding of the psychosocial needs and health risks of loneliness on pregnant people and new parents. A scoping review has been completed in order to map and synthesize the literature to date on loneliness experienced during pregnancy and the first five years of parenthood.Methods: To address the aim of this review, a wide net was cast in order to detect experiences of perinatal or parental loneliness, and/or instances where loneliness was measured in this population. Among the inclusion criteria were loneliness in people who were pregnant, who were parents in the postpartum period, or who had children aged five years or younger. A search for literature was conducted in December 2020 using nine databases: MEDLINE (Ovid), EMBASE (embase.com), SCOPUS (scopus.com), Cochrane Library including CENTRAL (Wiley), CINAHL (Ebscohost), PsycINFO (Ebscohost), Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest) and Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest) and the Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate).Discussion: Perinatal and parental loneliness studies are limited and have rarely been targeted and developed through a program of research. Loneliness inquiry in this population has frequently been studied in relation to other concepts of interest (e.g., postpartum depression). Alternatively, the importance of loneliness has emerged from study participants as relevant to the research topic during qualitative inquiry. Across studies, the prevalence of loneliness ranged from 32% to 100%. Loneliness was commonly experienced alongside parenting difficulties, with parents feeling as though they were alone in their struggles. As loneliness has been called a sensitive indicator of wellbeing, we believe screening will help healthcare professionals identify common difficulties and early signs of depression experienced during pregnancy and parenthood.The protocol is available on Open Science Framework at DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/BFVPZ.
Parent perspectives and psychosocial needs 2 years following child critical injury: A qualitative inquiry