Ansiedade materna e maternidade: Revisão crítica da literatura.

This article presents a systematic literature review about maternal anxiety and motherhood, considering the period between January 2009 to December 2014. Forthy-three scientific articles, focused on mother’s anxiety, were included, derived from a search to the following databases: American Search Premier Complete, LILACS, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, SciELO and Web of Science. The analysis was based on year of publication, language, area of publishing, design, participants, instruments, objectives and main results and conclusions. The need to develop instruments specifically targeted to assess maternal anxiety in Brazilian context was noted, and also the importance of its identification during the pregnancy, as a preventive and protective measure for the mothers mental health, the babies development and the quality of this dyadic relationship. The findings pointed to the need for further studies to evaluate different interventions and treatments to the management of this psychological condition.