Effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation technique on anxiety caused by Covid-19 in pregnant women: A randomized clinical trial.

AIM: To determine the effectiveness of the progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) technique on anxiety caused by Covid-19 in pregnant women under the auspices of comprehensive health service centers in the nineteenth district of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. METHOD: This study is a randomized clinical trial. A total of 126 pregnant women were randomly allocated to the intervention group (N = 63) and control group (N = 63). All participants completed demographic questionnaires and the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale electronically. The intervention was held in six sessions through Sky Room (three times a week). It consisted of training and practicing the PMR. The intervention group was re-evaluated with the related questionnaires immediately after the intervention and 2 weeks later, and the control group 2 and 4 weeks after the baseline. RESULTS: There was a significant difference between the control and intervention groups at the baseline (P = .05). Nevertheless, analysis of variance test results showed that the difference between the intervention and control groups was found to be significantly different statistically; (22.92 ± 6.07) for intervention versus (28.13 ± 6.93) for control, with the second follow up (P = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Progressive muscle relaxation is used as a useful intervention to reduce anxiety in pregnant women during coronavirus pandemics educated and recommended with more emphasis and sensitivity in pregnancy care by healthcare providers.

Psychological interventions for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy: A systematic review.

Various studies have investigated the role that psychological factors play in the etiology of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. The current research was aimed at reviewing the psychological interventions that are implemented to treat the aforementioned conditions. Vocabulary from the Medical Subject Headings database was used as basis for identifying search keywords, which were then employed to search for relevant articles in PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, PsycINFO, Scopus, the Scientific Information Database, IranMedex, Magiran, and IranDoc. A total of 174,270 articles published in the period between 1985 and 2017 were obtained. After the elimination of repetitive and unrelated articles, six clinical trials were evaluated using the Oxford quality scoring system or Jadad scale. Psychological interventions for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy fall into four categories, namely, behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, hypnosis, and progressive muscle relaxation. On the basis of the Jadad scale, all the reviewed studies were evaluated as being of poor methodological quality. Further studies are needed to obtain strong evidence on the effectiveness of psychological interventions for the treatment of women suffering from nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.