Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Introduction Pregnancy is a time of intense physiological and anatomical change, 1,2 which is directly related to psychological and emotional aspects of women. 3 During pregnancy, women tend to undergo psycho-affective restructuring with the aim of assimilating the new reality and opening up to the possibility of motherhood, which will enable interaction between mother and baby. 4 Various studies 5, 3 have shown that, in this stage of life, women present with a composite psychodynamic, which may be accompanied by affective regression, pronounced narcissism and the capacity to indulge in fantasy. Although such psychological phenomena tend to be normal and to be experienced by all pregnant women, they could potentially take on a pathological character. 5–7 As part of this process, pregnant women tend to build up an idealized notion of their babies, creating a series of expectations with regard to the child, and for themselves as mothers- to-be. 8,9 According to contributions deriving from psychoanalysis, depending on the psychic organization of this future mother, this idealized baby could embody characteristics of omnipotence and perfection. 8,9 Thus, representing the renaissance of the maternal narcissism, it may be expected as a being immune to disease and death, and possessing the capacity to realize the dreams which they, the women, or the children’s fathers never achieved. 9 So, depending on the degree and the rigidity of this natural idealization mechanism, a diagnosis of foetal malformation could end up being intolerable for this mother-to-be, producing conditions that affect her mental health, such as anxiety and depression. 10,11 A foetal malformation is defined physiologically as a “morphological defect of an organ, part of an organ or larger area of the body, resulting from a process of intrinsically abnormal development.” 12 This diagnosis generates stress in the expectant mother, which could be even more accentuated when experienced as an unsustainable threat to her narcissism, eroding her expectations of the imaginary baby. Conversely, in cases of lethal pathologies, the grief experienced by these women goes beyond the loss of the imaginary baby, characterized by the loss of the real baby. 13 In these situations, the stress, built on the basis of a relationship between the individual and her environment, 14 ceases to be a merely organic reaction and assumes a psychological component. Accordingly, based on the perception of the individual with regard to the situation and the analysis she makes thereof, the stress is also related to the way she experiences it at the psychological level, to how much she can or cannot bear it emotionally, and/or the extent to which she feels, or does not feel, she is actually capable of dealing with it. 15 This is evident, for example, in a study conducted on women in the second trimester of pregnancy, who demonstrated a high level of psychological stress and depression on receiving the diagnosis of foetal malformation, but with a diminishing tendency as the gestation progresses. 16 Other studies have shown that stress affects the life of the individual and is also related to the way in which the individual deals with the stressor, in this case the foetal malformation. 17 Accordingly, one of the dimensions that interferes with the life of the expectant mother with a diagnosis of CFM and the level of stress she experiences, is that which, in the area of cognitive psychology, is termed coping: “A J Psychol Clin Psychiatry. 2023;14(4):95‒100. 95 ©2023 Leal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. Relationship between perceived stress and religious/ spiritual coping in pregnant women with malformed foetus Volume 14 Issue 4 - 2023 Miriam Martins Leal, 1 Gislane Ferreira de Melo, 2 Eduardo Gomes, 3 Eliana Trindade, 4 Marta Helena de Freitas 5 1 Pediatrician, UCB/HMIB/UniCeub, Brazil 2 Physical Education, Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil 3 Nursing, UFPE: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil 4 Psychology, UniCeub, Brazil 5 Psychology, UCB, Brazil and University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK Correspondence: Marta Helena de Freitas, Psychology, Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK, Tel +5561984942405, Email Received: June 27, 2023 | Published: July 11, 2023 Abstract Congenital Foetal Malformity (CFM) is a stress factor for pregnant women, and religiosity and spirituality have an important role to play in coping with it. The aim of this study was to identify the correlation between stress, as perceived by pregnant women with CFM, and the diverse forms of religious/spiritual coping (RSC). This is a cross-sectional study with pregnant women treated in a hospital specializing in obstetrics in the city of Brasília, located in the Federal District in Brazil. The sample comprised 99 expectant mothers. Religious/spiritual coping was measured using the RCOPE scale devised by Pargament, Koenig and Perez (2000) which was subsequently translated into Portuguese and adapted for Brazil by Panzini and Bandeira. Stress was evaluated using the Perceived Stress Scale of Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983), translated and validated by Luft et al. (2007). For the purposes of analysis, the SPSS-IBM 22.0 software application was employed, with a statistical analysis using means, standard deviations and frequencies, along with the Chi-Squared (elevated power of sample – 0.77) and Logistical Regression tests aimed at evaluating the relationship between perceived stress and the type of RSC. The results indicated that 92.8% of pregnant women with CFM presented with positive religious/ spiritual coping (PRSC), with a mean value for perceived stress of 41.17 ± 9.03, there being an inverse relationship between perceived stress and PRSC (p = 0.02). Just five of the pregnant women presented with higher levels of stress and negative religious/spiritual coping (NRSC), without any correlation with demographic data (expectant mother’s age, religion, income, schooling, CFM prognosis or time since diagnosis). It was found that 81 (81.8%) of the pregnant women would like this topic to be addressed in the hospital setting, primarily by the doctors (56.6%) treating them. Keywords: religious coping, pregnancy, stress, religion, spirituality Journal of Psychology & Clinical Psychiatry Research Article Open Access