Psychological Complications after Abortion - Research Paper Example

The frequency of these problems is the same: the woman leaves her pregnancy to term or leads. In addition to physical complications, women suffer emotionally and spiritually. These effects of abortion include feelings of guilt, anguish, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, insomnia, various types of neurotic and psychotic illnesses, suicidal tendencies, nightmares that are the remains of the aborted baby, painful memories on the date he was born, and so on. To describe the problems experienced after an abortion, the term Post-Abortion Syndrome is often utilized.

The only words used by the scientific community to refer to psychological suffering of abortion are those associated with anxiety, depression or some corollaries of PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, it seems that the terminology reduces the expression field of suffering experienced as a result of an abortion. Indeed, testing protocols and treatment of PTSD can be used only if the symptoms provide clear manifestations in a period close to the event. Doctors, researchers and counselors report a growing number of attempts and completed suicides among women around the anniversary date that their babies would be born, if they had not had an abortion.

The highest rate of such cases is 15 to 24. However, the demonstration of suffering of abortion is often part time or even can do that with the approach to surface death. Encysted psychological pain will then wait for a strong event to manifestly occur and for the person to make a link between suffering and the past event of abortion. Some testimonials even evoke the period immediately following abortion as a window to express psychic pain that closes by excessive pain, and does not emerge until years later during a maternity, bereavement, illness and so on.

Moreover, the physical and psychological consequences of abortion are varied, personal and difficult to circumvent and to accurately describe. This is why a broader appellation is recommended: the psychological consequences of abortion. The strongest predictor of psychological problems after an abortion is a history of mental problems before surgery. Only 1-20% of women have serious mental problems (the figures vary from study to study and as defined). Often these women were already in psychiatric treatment before the abortion.

A higher risk of negative reactions is also found among the women who terminate a wanted pregnancy at home (for medical reasons), which are highly ambivalent, in whom pregnancy is far advanced, that does not find support from people that matter to them that are in conflict of faith or in very young girls. To consider also the other possibility, problems may actually be due to causes other than abortion (poverty, divorce, unemployment, partner violence, sexual abuse etc.). Above all it is important to know that the percentage of mental problems in women who have abortions do not exceed those found in women who have completed an unplanned pregnancy, or even in the general female population.

This conclusion was confirmed by an expert group of the American Psychological Association, in July 2008, after analyzing more than 220 scientific studies published after 1989. The birth of a child not desired can also cause psychological damage. A majority of young mothers experience more or less strong “Baby Blues” but about 14-27 percent suffer from real depression requiring treatment in the first year after childbirth. The