Loneliness in pregnant and postpartum people and parents of children aged 5 years or younger: a scoping review protocol

The objective of this study will be to summarize the current knowledge of loneliness experienced during pregnancy and by parents during the postpartum period through the first 5  years of the child’s life.MethodsA scoping review protocol was designed following Arksey and O ’Malley’s framework. We will include all types of literature in English, including all study designs, reviews, opinion articles, dissertations, reports, books, and grey literature. To be considered for inclusion, sources should focus on loneliness in pregnant persons, postpartum people, and pare nts of children 5 years or younger. We will search the following electronic databases (from inception onwards): MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL Complete, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, Dissertations& Theses Global, Sociological Abstracts, Scopus, and Web of Science. Grey literature will be identified searching the British governmental website gov.uk, the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, the Campaign to End Loneliness, and the British Red Cross ’s Action on Loneliness websites. Two reviewers, working independently of each other, will screen the titles and abstracts of the articles returned by the searches, then screen the selected full-text articles, and extract data. A third reviewer will cast the deciding vote in case no consensus is r eached. Results will be given in the narrative form, mapped, and illustrated.DiscussionThis scoping review will capture the state of the current literature on loneliness in preg...
Source: Systematic Reviews - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research