Facing tokophobia: Presentation of the ARTEMIS intervention model and preliminary evaluation of its efficacy

Tokophobia, that is a sever fear of delivery represents a clinical condition that affects about 14% of pregnant women. Several variables, medical, psychological, and social-relational have been associated with this disease. Several studies have focused on the association among to-kophobia and anxiety and depressive diseases with contrasting results. Literature has high-lighted how tokophobia can negatively affect mother’s well-being and her baby’s development in the post-partum. This suggests the importance of treatment for tokophobia in order to prevent both medical and psychological complication during pregnancy and post-partum period. The aim of the present contribution was to present a specific model of intervention for to-kophobia, called ARTEMIS, that integrates psychosomatic and Adaptive Information processing models through the use of psychotherapeutic techniques (EMDR, mindfulness and Hypnosis) developed from these models. A preliminary study on the efficacy of this model on 10 pregnant women was reported. The results underlined a statistically significant decrease of tokophobia and anxiety symptoms after the treatment. These findings suggest the potential of the protocol and encourage to con-tinue its validation through other studies with wider samples and through process analyses that allow to investigate the mechanisms of functioning of the intervention.

Keywords: Tokophobia, psychosomatic model, Adaptive Information Modeling, EMDR, mindfulness.

Chiara Maiorani, Sara Molgora, Emanuela Saita, Affrontare la tocofobia: presentazione del modello di intervento ARTEMIS ed evidenze preliminari di utilità in "PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE" 1/2021, pp 121-142, DOI: 10.3280/PDS2021-001008