2.7. Selection Criteria

The inclusion criteria were being published in English, reporting primary data and having the full-length text available, being original articles with at least 100 participants, being about the new coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), and referring exclusively to its psychological consequences for women who were pregnant during the outbreak or were within the first year postpartum. The exclusion criteria were being editorials, letters or commentaries. We excluded articles that did not consider psychological aspects during pregnancy and abstracts without the full text available. A total of 116 articles were found in the initial search. After duplicates and papers without full texts available were removed, 41 full texts of possibly pertinent studies were assessed for eligibility and were independently screened by both authors to reduce the selection bias.

Finally, of a total of 116 publications found, 17 manuscripts met the aforementioned inclusion criteria; therefore, they were considered eligible and were included in the rapid review. Narrative synthesis was applied to analyze the relevant papers grouped under themes.

The study selection process is illustrated by the PRISMA flow chart shown in Figure 1.

Prisma flowchart of information through the different phases of the review.