Abstract

PERES, Rodrigo Sanches  and  SANTOS, Manoel Antonio dos. Counseling in a psychological support group for mothers of preterm babies: an exploratory study. Vínculo [online]. 2018, vol.15, n.2, pp. 43-56. ISSN 1806-2490.  http://dx.doi.org/3c79c4f3165443f374c-3358.

Psychological support groups stand out as one of the most beneficial care modalities in face of the need to offer emotional support to mothers of preterm infants. The objective of the present study was to describe the incidence of counseling as a therapeutic factor in a support group for mothers of premature infants admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of a philanthropic hospital. The corpus of the research was consisted by the records of 10 sessions of the group, which were submitted to descriptive-exploratory analyzes conducted independently by two researchers and, later, compared regarding the identification of the occurrence of and its beneficial effects. The counseling was identified at least once in each session, having emerged essentially in a context of actively offering information, suggestions and guidance. It was noted that counseling derived from verbal interventions by the coordinator and from participants reports. The results suggest that the mothers who attended the support group in question valued the exchange of experiences, which potentiated change processes.

Keywords : Support groups; Group processes; Therapeutic factors; Prematurity.

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