The gist is as stated in the title. From the article:
Question 1: Who are the Royal College of Psychiatrists? As an American, I don’t know anything about them other than what I read in Wikipedia. Are they an utterly neutral psychiatric organization or do they have an agenda? It seems to me that they are neutral, akin to the APA, but I don’t know.
Question 2: Is there something to this? And if there is, does it change things? Should American law take this information into account at all?
Presumably women may also be at risk of mental breakdowns if they do not.
The article says that 90% of abortions (in the UK, presumably), occur because doctors claim just that. Honestly, that seems insane to me…
But as I said earlier, I claim utter ignorance of abortion law and culture of the UK.
I would assume that 90% of abortions occur because the women involved want to have an abortion. I’m not opposed to reasonable pre-abortion counseling–it’s a big decision either way. I’d like to see a confirmatory study or look at the data set from a different person or research team. I’d also like to see the survey instrument–there are many ways to construct an interview schedule that wittingly or unwittingly provide the answers the investigator is seeking. For example, I have seen studies on trauma where there were no check boxes for having experienced a trauma and yet not having post-traumatic sequelae. It’s also possible that the report confuses correlation with causality–that seems likely given that bit about counseling women about the presumptive mental health risks.
We don’t, in theory, have abortion on demand. It has to be considered by doctors to be in the best interests of the woman’s physical or mental health. In practice, this results in the statistics you see, because doctors sign most abortions off in this way. BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Q&A: Abortion law
Whatever the risk might be, I guarantee it’s nowhere near as crazy as having children will make you.
Reminds me a bit of the claim, a few decades ago, how being gay made you more likely to have all sorts of mental problems.
Funny how those seem to have cleared up in places with the widespread accepteance of gays.
In other words, duh.
Question 1: Who are the Royal College of Psychiatrists? As an American, I don’t know anything about them other than what I read in Wikipedia. Are they an utterly neutral psychiatric organization or do they have an agenda? It seems to me that they are neutral, akin to the APA, but I don’t know.
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The RCP is the UK’s official national body of Psychiatry - the organisation that all psychiatrists will be members of, and they have to take an examination in order to be part of it and carry the letters MRCPsych after their names. In this, it’s no different from other such organisations as the Royal College of Surgeons, Midwives, General Practitioners etc etc. We’re not talking about some goofy splinter group with a weird political agenda.
This statement from the RCP strikes me as a classic statement of the bleedin obvious. You think it’s odd that women might suffer mental health problems by going through such an emotionally charged procedure? But I don’t see the RCP arguing against abortion here - merely that the woman’s mental health should be taken into account through a program of counselling.
Not sure what the debate is here - is anyone against counseling women that there are risks, both physical and mental, to abortion? Why should abortion be treated any different than any major medical procedure? And is it surprising that a procedure as emotionally charged as this one has risks to a mother’s mental health?
I’m not saying abortion alone is enough to unbalance a woman, but if it’s combined with other things, then I could see how it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Because people generally aren’t going to lie about most medical procedures. Because there aren’t large political/religious movements that will lie, terrorize or kill to stop the typical medical procedure. The problem is that “counseling women that there are risks, both physical and mental, to abortion” is likely to, in the real world, amount to terrorizing women into not having abortions, regardless of the risks of NOT having one. I note that you didn’t suggest that they be given a comparison of abortion versus live births - which are generally riskier than abortion.
bolding mine. Every time I see people arguing about parental notification I only see responses from the pro-choice groups that it is not a major medical procedure because it is done outpatient. I recall someone once comparing it to having a wart removed or dental work. :rolleyes: I think it is slightly more complicated than that considering what my wife had to go through for the D&Cs after her miscarriages.
Back to the OP: Have they said whether the risk of depression is greater in the short or long term? Is the depression a result of or concurrent with the postpartum change in hormone levels? Is the depression related to guilt about what they did and the reasons for it or is it because of other factors such as pressure from outside groups?
There are a lot of things that I don’t see addressed or answered. Anyone have a better insight?
Slight hijack: many women who carry to term suffer some form of postpartum hormonal issues and receive followup care from their OB/GYNs including hormonal medication or anti-depressant/anti-anxiety drugs. Do women who receive abortions from clinics and not from their regular OB/GYN receive similar after care or do they have to go it alone? Are they given a discharge notice like the hospital gives you when you leave? My wife was offered counseling after her miscarriages to help her with the feelings of loss. I was wondering if the clinics offer something similar to the teens who go there. If it is available, are they told about it before the procedure (I think they might be a little distracted afterwards and might not pay attention to any advice or pamphlets they receive as they are walking out the door).
The Royal College of Psychiatrists is not a religious organization; I doubt they have a political or religious agenda, considering it is a large professional fraternity of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom, where abortion has been legal for over 30 years and is not a topic of serious debate.
ETA: most professional midwifes, as well as all Doctors, do counsel women on the risks of live birth. But unless there are extenuating risk factors, the risk of live birth in the modern day is not that high. Neither is the risk of serious side effects from abortion, but the risks do exist.
You really should read the links before jumping to conclusions about the Evil Religious Moonbats ™.
Well, I primarily wanted to avoid invictive like Der Trihs’s, but that bridge has already been crossed. Because, yeah, there are a lot of people who are opposed to counselling.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not…are you saying that birthing a child will definitively cause more mental anguish than getting an abortion?
I replied to him already - but do you really think the Royal College of Psychiatrists would be one of those? It would be unethical for a physician, or a psychiatrist, to not make a patient aware of the possible risks of a procedure, any procedure.
As to other organizations taking this report and blowing it out of proportion, sure it could happen. But blaming the Royal College for doing research and then talking about that research is insane. I simply don’t understand why confidential, non-political counseling regarding the risks of the procedure is such a no-go area for abortion but not for any other medical procedure? Do women not have the right to know the risks they are putting themselves in for?
I read Diogenes as not just being about the mental stress of childbirth, but about the mental stress of the next 20 years or so 
(Though, as most parents will tell you, in the end it’s worth it).
And I agree with SanVito that the RCP’s statement is “bleedin obvious”. It’s only when abortion becomes so politically charged that people worry about what the sub-text might be.
Wait, I’m a little confused here. So in the country covered by this study, you can only get an abortion if a doctor verifies that a pregnancy is a threat to your physical or mental health. Since, honestly, the majority of pregnancies aren’t an abnormal threat to a woman’s body (that is, there’s always some risk, but most pregnancies are not “high-risk” pregnancies), there must be a shit-load of forms marked “mental health risk” so that women can obtain the abortions they want.
So someone looked through all these papers marked “mental health risk” and decided that women getting abortions are at risk for their mental health? Wow, you don’t say!
Seems it’s more a problem of lack of honest abortion on demand. The system in place forces a “diagnosis” of mental health risk, and then they report that there’s a mental health risk based on those diagnoses.
Talk about begging the question*!
*I think I’ve used that correctly, but I’m not entirely certain.
Nah, sounds to me like the comment of a dad who just spent a few days at home with a couple of small children, and thinking about what it will be like to add one more to the mix!
As far as the OP is concerned, I think that any number of events or decisions in a person’s life can cause depression, depending on the circumstances. I don’t see any reason abortion should be in a special category. As we all know, Diogenes’ joke aside, post-partum depression can be profound. Adoption, as much as I am a supporter of it, can be very difficult for birth mothers. Likewise, there might be regrets not to mention hormonal issues after abortion. No reason not to recognize these problems and get women some help.
The women are at risk of mental health issues if they DON’T have an abortion <- official reason for abortion because abortion requires a medical justification in the UK.
The women are at risk of mental health issues if the DO have an abortion <- what RCoP research suggests.
Not birthing them, raising them.
Sarahfena also has a point about the risks of PPD and there are a host of other emotional disorders that may be potentially caused or aggravated by sudden parenthood (especially unwanted parenthood).
I think that for some women, the potential for mental and emotional problems is greater if they have the child than if they have the abortion (not to mention the emotional problems that the child might develop). Children are a huge emotional stressor. I would argue that they are a much bigger stressor than an abortion is (and giving a kid up for adoption is no emotional picnic either).
(Sarahfeena is also right about my just having spent a spring break with two little girls running wild in the house while Mommy was in the bathroom retching with morning sickness)
Had a great post all written up and the hamsters ate it.
The law is just like Szlater said, but consider two things:
Most UK physicians believe that an unwanted pregnancy is bad for the mental or physical health of the mother and any other children she may already have. As pregnancy is more dangerous statistically than abortion, they will give abortions at the request of the women on the grounds of physical danger not mental.
Physicians in the UK have the right to object and not give abortions as part of their practice; roughly 24% do so now. So the women have the right to go to another doctor.
So saying that counceling women on the risks of abortion, in the UK, is code for scaring the shit out of them so they don’t get abortions is just plain silly.
One of the reasons the UK is my preferred choice of abode is because issues like this are far less political than they are in the US; it’s a simple health issue here, not a religious one.