After miscarriage, women seek support, emotional outlet on Instagram
Expressing grief and other emotions, and connecting with other people who experienced similar losses, are some of the ways women use the photo-sharing platform Instagram to handle a miscarriage, researchers say.
In analyzing hundreds of posts beneath the "ihadamiscarriage" hashtag, the analysis team observed that women utilize the social media site for finding community and "breaking the silence" around pregnancy loss. Healthcare providers should think about discussing this outlet as a resource, the researchers write in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Up to 20% of pregnancies lead to miscarriage, even though information on diagnosis and health care is accessible, the psycho-social implications of fetal loss are less widely discussed, the authors note.
"Our culture has a convention of not disclosing pregnancies until they are in the next trimester - when it is 'safe' to tell people, since the pregnancy is probably likely to be fine," said study leader Dr Rebecca Mercier of Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia.
This means many women proceed through miscarriage without social support and are often in situations where they are dealing with and perhaps grieving a loss that others may not know, she said.
Mercier and her team were considering getting a more "unfiltered view" of women's responses to miscarriage by looking at how women described their experiences on Instagram.
The researchers reviewed 200 Instagram posts selected over five days in the spring of 2019 with the #ihadamiscarriage tag, a campaign started by Los Angeles-based psychologist Jessica Zucker.
The overarching theme behind sharing experience on social media was to seek support and also to offer it, the researchers found. Miscarriages were depicted as pivotal and life-defining moments, with posts that reflected women's new identity as a mother despite having lost their baby.
Grief was the mostly expressed emotion, accompanied by conflicted emotions, anger, regret and hope. Many posts were found to contain not merely one emotion, such as grief, but described several feelings simultaneously, the analysis team notes.
Some posts also described the reactions of family members, friends and colleagues, including comments women found insensitive and hurtful.
"Many of the things that friends and acquaintances often tell women who've had miscarriages aren't helpful and bordering on insensitive," said Dr Michael Greene of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was simply not mixed up in study. "Those sorts of dismissive remarks aren't beneficial to women who are grieving over the loss of a pregnancy."
Most women considered religion as a way of processing and coping with their loss. Many memorialized the miscarriage in many ways, including planting trees, getting tattoos, creating a memorial or artwork, and naming the infant.
"A number of the content posted suggests that persons are developing their own ways of remembrance and memorial because of their loss, and sharing these on social media could be its own sort of grieving ritual for our age," Mercier said.
Several posts spoke of women seeking help for anxiety and depression and attending professional remedy or counseling, while others emphasized self-care, including exercise, nutrition and wellness.
Mercier cautions that any woman sharing her experience on social media would risk opening themselves to negative comments, and that sharing and finding support online shouldn't replace seeking professional help, when needed.
"The internet comes with an ugly side to it . . . I'm very hesitant to recommend something similar to going to the web to fix your problems," Greene said, adding that he prefers to refer women to therapists and even other patients who have had similar experiences.
The study does not prove posting on Instagram actually resulted in a greater amount of resolution or coming to peace with the function in comparison with talking with a licensed doctor, he added.
"It is important for healthcare providers to simply appreciate that could be a very devastating experience for your patient and not dismiss and minimize it and recognize it as the girl does - as this sort of a life event," Greene said.
