Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the concept of social support for women who miscarried.
The framework of this study was based on the model of House (1981) that formulated the four types of social support function (emotional support, appraisal support, instrumental support and informational support).
The data were gatherd using the semi-structured interviews with 17 women who miscarried.
Content analysis conducted showed there could be three categories as social support “Giving emotional support for the experience of miscarriage”, “Giving means to keep physical comfort”, and “Giving information to cope with the experience of miscarriage”.“Paying respect to privacy”, sub-category of the emotional support, is the peculiar support for women who experience loss like miscarriage.
The data suggested that three categories were not separated clearly, but overlapped each other.
