INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL PHOBIA ON FEAR OF BIRTH IN PREGNANT WOMEN

Abstract

The research was carried out to examine the effect of social phobia on fear of childbirth in pregnant women. The descriptive study was conducted with 326 pregnant women in a university hospital between December 2019 and May 2020. Research data were collected using personal data collection form, Wijma Birth Expectation/Experience Scale (W-DEQ) Version A, Brief Social Phobia Scale. Coding and evaluation of the data was done in SPSS 20.0 package program. The conformity of the data to the normal distribution was evaluated with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. In the statistical analysis of the data; descriptive statistics, independent inter group t test for normally distributed parametric data, One Way Anova were used.  54.0% of the pregnant women who participated in the study planned their pregnancy, 97.9% wanted their pregnancy, only 16.9% started to receive health care from the fourth week of theirpregnancy. Pregnant women; The mean W-DEQA score is 68.96±11.46, the mean score of the Brief Social Phobia Scale anxiety subscale is 7.51±6.13, the avoidance subscale mean score is 6.76±6.29, the physical symptom ssubscale is 2, His total score was 59±3.10, and his total score was 16.88±14.29. No statistically significant difference was found between the W-DEQA mean score and the social phobi a scale mean score (p>0.05).  Women with social phobia have an increased fear of childbirth. It is thought that this will increase the intervention in childbirth.