London ? Mothers who see and hold their stillborn infants may suffer more psychological trauma than those who don’t, a new study suggests contradicting years of medical advice to bereaved parents.

The research also found that next-born children are more likely to have psychological problems if their mothers held or saw their stillborn sibling.

“Our result suggests there is no justification for telling parents that not seeing their dead baby could make mourning more difficult, and that those who are reluctant to see and hold their child should not be encouraged to do so,” said the study’s primary author, Dr. Patricia Hughes.

Several experts welcomed the findings, but Erica Stewart, spokeswoman for Britain’s Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society, said they contradicted her experience with mothers who had lost a child.

“We take calls from mums who lost babies in the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and they’re wanting to deal with it now because it was never acknowledged at the time,” she said. “They had no closure.”

Published this week in British medical journal The Lancet, the study assessed 65 women in Britain who were pregnant for a second time after a stillbirth.

Thirty-nine percent of those who had seen and held their dead baby suffered depression during pregnancy or in the following year, compared to 21 percent of those who had only seen the infant. Just 6 percent of those who had neither seen nor held their baby were depressed.

About 0.5 percent of pregnancies in developed countries end in stillbirth, which in the study was defined as spontaneous pregnancy loss after 18 weeks gestation or more.

For decades stillborn infants were quickly removed to avoid distressing the parents.