Anna Meyer and Alissa Petrites, both of whom graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS) in Spring 2015, spent Summer 2012 in Ghana studying perinatal maternal mental health and the impact of stillbirth on health providers under the mentorship of Dr. Katherine Gold, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UMMS, and Dr. Kathryn Spangenberg from the unit of Family Medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
Along with other medical students, they were selected to participate in the 2012 Global REACH faculty-led international research trips in which students join existing faculty projects, work with their mentor’s established relationships, and help to build the overall body of work. (Read more here.)
Drs. Meyer and Petrites helped collect primary data to determine the prevalence of postpartum depression among mothers presenting with a sick infant for care, followed-up to assess longitudinal outcomes for mother and baby, and assessed the coping mechanisms and mental health of bereaved mothers whose babies did not survive. They also interviewed dozens of physicians and midwives to understand how they cope personally with the high burden of perinatal death in Ghana.
Dr. Meyer is now an intern in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin while Dr. Petrites is an intern in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington.
Meyer AC, Opoku C, Gold KJ. “They say I should not think about it:” A qualitative study of how bereaved mothers in Ghana experience infant loss. OMEGA- J Death Dying, 2016. Published online before print Feb 7, 2016; doi:10.1177/0030222816629165
Petrites AD, Mullan PB, Spangenberg K, Gold KJ. “You have no choice but to go on.” How physicians and midwives in Ghana cope with frequent perinatal deaths. Mat Child Health, 2015 (accepted, in press).