Abstract

Smoking, consuming alcohol and using drugs during pregnancy increases the risk of stillbirth. In this study, we wanted to identify which factors affects women’s decisions to engage in these behaviours. To answer this question, we looked at all of the previously published studies that conducted interviews with women to explore this problem. After our search, we included 22 studies in our analysis. Women from the studies reported that there were internal and external issues affecting their behaviours. The internal issues were, for example, the perceived benefits of using substances like spending time with others or using substances to get relaxed; and the feelings of guilt, that increased women’s levels of stress, which made them use more substances. Regarding external issues, women reported that being treated poorly by healthcare professionals, not having enough information about the risks, and not having enough support within their family or friends were big problems. Many factors have an influence on women’s substance use behaviour and they all need to be considered in order to better support these patients to reduce their risk of stillbirth.