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.