Healing After Pregnancy Loss: Why Mental Healthcare Is an Essential Part of Care
August 27, 2026 |
Recognized among Newsweek's World's Best Hospitals, Sheba Medical Center is advancing reproductive psychiatry through research that is reshaping care for women after stillbirth and pregnancy termination due to fetal abnormalities.
At the Chava Center for Maternal Mental Health, led by Dr. Vered Bar, clinical care and research go hand in hand. Rather than viewing pregnancy loss as a single medical event, researchers are examining the entire recovery journey—from understanding women’s psychiatric needs after loss, to identifying overlooked emotional experiences, to evaluating innovative treatment approaches that support healing. Together, three recent studies offer a more comprehensive picture of what recovery can look like for women and their families.
Stillbirth and the termination of a desired pregnancy due to severe fetal abnormalities are among the most devastating experiences a family can face. Approximately 0.75% of pregnancies end in stillbirth, and the loss can be followed by depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and suicidality. Currently, the Chava Center receives about 100 new referrals each month, of which 20% to 25% involve women who have experienced stillbirth.
Historically, however, the mental health consequences of pregnancy loss have received far less attention than physical recovery. At Sheba Medical Center’s Chava Center, mental healthcare is treated as an essential part of comprehensive maternity care. Through multidisciplinary collaboration between psychiatrists, psychologists, obstetricians, and social workers, the center provides individualized support while conducting research that helps define best practices for women experiencing pregnancy loss.
Recovery Begins with Understanding Each Woman’s Needs
One of the Chava Center’s recent studies, published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, examined real-world psychiatric care for women following stillbirth and pregnancy termination due to fetal abnormalities. Between 2014 and 2019, 676 women experienced late pregnancy loss at Sheba Medical Center. Of those, 146 women (21.6%) contacted the Chava Center for evaluation, and 101 women continued specialized psychiatric treatment, providing researchers with valuable insight into clinical practice and patient outcomes. The researchers found that 60% of women were diagnosed with adjustment disorder with grief reaction, making it the most common psychiatric diagnosis after late pregnancy loss. Importantly, 82% of these women achieved full remission through psychosocial interventions alone, without requiring antidepressant medication. Overall, 39.6% of patients received selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), primarily women experiencing major depressive episodes, worsening depression, or exacerbations of pre-existing psychiatric illness. Rather than supporting a one-size-fits-all approach, the findings reinforce the importance of individualized care. For many women, specialized psychotherapy and grief-focused interventions were sufficient to support recovery, while others benefited from combining psychotherapy with medication based on their clinical presentation.Looking Beyond Grief
Clinical symptoms alone do not always capture the full emotional impact of pregnancy loss. For women who undergo termination of a wanted pregnancy because of severe fetal abnormalities, psychological suffering may extend beyond grief or trauma alone. To better understand these experiences, in another study, Shirat Sartel-Raviv and Dr. Vered Bar of Sheba Medical Center’s Chava Center collaborated with Prof. Yossi Levi-Belz of of The Lior Tsfaty Center for Suicide and Mental Pain Studies at the University of Haifa and Prof. Gadi Zerach of Ariel University’s Department of Psychology to examine whether medically indicated pregnancy termination may constitute a morally injurious experience. The study included 132 women receiving care after late pregnancy loss, including 99 women who underwent pregnancy termination because of suspected fetal abnormalities and 33 women who experienced intrauterine fetal demise. The researchers found that potentially morally injurious experiences—particularly feelings of personal responsibility and betrayal—were associated with profound shame, violations of trust, prolonged grief, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. By introducing moral injury as a framework for understanding these experiences, the study expands how clinicians conceptualize recovery after medically indicated pregnancy termination and highlights the need for therapeutic approaches that address these complex emotional responses alongside grief and trauma.
Turning Research into Healing
Understanding psychological distress is only one step. The next challenge is determining how best to help women recover. To evaluate a potential treatment approach, Dr. Vered Bar also collaborated in a third study with researchers from the Chava Center, the Child Psychiatry Division at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sheba Medical Center, and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge to study an eight-week mind-body group therapy program developed specifically for women following stillbirth. The study followed 61 women, who completed standardized assessments before and after participating in the program. The multidisciplinary intervention combines mindfulness, relaxation techniques, cognitive behavioral strategies, psychoeducation, resilience-building exercises, and peer support. Dedicated sessions also include partners, recognizing that pregnancy loss affects the entire family. Following the eight-week program, the proportion of women screening positive for depression fell from 60.7% to 23.3%, probable PTSD declined from 36.1% to 21.3%, state anxiety decreased from 77.5% to 54.1%, and suicidal ideation dropped from 19.7% to 8.2%. Overall, participants experienced significant improvements in depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and anxiety, providing encouraging early evidence that holistic, multidisciplinary interventions may help women recover following stillbirth.Advancing Reproductive Mental Healthcare Through Research
Viewed together, these studies reflect a broader vision for reproductive psychiatry. The first examines how individualized psychiatric care can support recovery after pregnancy loss and demonstrates that many women improve through specialized psychosocial interventions alone. The second expands clinicians’ understanding of the complex emotional burden that may accompany medically indicated pregnancy termination by identifying moral injury as an important dimension of care. The third begins to evaluate an innovative therapeutic approach that addresses both the psychological and physical effects of stillbirth while demonstrating measurable improvements in patients’ mental health. Together, these studies illustrate how the Chava Center combines compassionate, patient-centered care with research that continually advances reproductive mental healthcare. As one of the hospitals recognized by Newsweek among the World’s Best Hospitals, Sheba Medical Center continues to help shape a more comprehensive model of care—one that supports women and families not only through pregnancy, but also through the difficult journey of healing after loss.More Posts
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