title: The role of religious beliefs in pregnancy loss.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Birth can cause and post-traumatic stresses in many women even when the occasion of birth results in alive baby. Fetal death can challenge her understanding of justice and God's love toward his creatures. Religious beliefs have a considerable effect on decreasing individuals' tendency toward bereavement; thus, it is expected to have a relationship with sorrow and mental distress ensuing fetal death. The present research has been conducted to review the existing literature on religion and fetal death and then study Iranian women and their families' response to such a tragedy.
  
  
  METHODS
  This is a unsystematic (narrative) review. Research was conducted to study the role of mothers' religious belief in their encounter with pregnancy loss in cases belonging to a 23-year period from 1990 to 2013. PubMed and Ovid databases and Iranian religious resources such as Tebyan were utilized for these studies. Of course, several articles were also derived by means of manual search.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nine out of 31 papers had the searched keywords in common in the preliminary search. A review of the existing papers indicated that only 4 out of 22 papers dealt exactly with the role of religion on reaction of parents to fetal death. The four papers belonged to the years 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012 indicating the new approach to religion in pregnancy loss cases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Religion has a significant effect on parents' acceptance of such mishaps and it may have a considerable effect on their recovery from such tragic events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Islamic Azad University, Falavarjan Branch, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Allahdadian
authors.affiliation: Department of Critical Care Nursing, Nursing and Midwifery Care Research Center, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfshsn University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Alireza
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Irajpour
keywords: Fetal death; pregnancy loss; religion; stillbirth