Obstetric Fistulas have a high prevalence rate in developing countries where there is a lack of immediate access to maternal health care for women. Although Obstetric Fistulas are physical injuries, they affect women’s psychosocial health. This analysis aims to display the inefficiency of focusing on surgical repairs as the only treatment option and to demonstrate the need to integrate mental health treatment at different Obstetric Fistulas treatment stages. A total of 8 research articles from both Pub Med and Web of Science met the inclusion criteria, and the analysis was done by country. The results showed the presence of depressive symptoms, although there is an immediate improvement in quality of life after surgical repair. In some cases, there was worsening of psychological symptoms due to residual incontinence with or without successful fistula closure. These results suggested that whereas surgical repairs positively impact Obstetric Fistula patients, it does not solve the depressive symptoms, which cause women to self-isolate and have suicidal ideations. The mental sequelae caused by Obstetrical Fistulas can only be resolved using structured mental health care that should be started before surgical repair and continued after repair.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43743 |
| Date | 31 January 2022 |
| Creators | Tall, Fatouma |
| Contributors | Saide, Judith, Genadry, Rene |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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