This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (30)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Virginia Abernethy, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1974;30(2):180-182.

Abstract
To estimate the need for family planning services in the psychiatric hospital, attitudinal, informational, and behavioral data relevant to fertility were collected in interviews with 60 consecutive female inpatient admissions, aged 13 to 28, to two state hospitals.

More than two thirds of the sample were sexually active, half had used some birth control method, but only 11 had used birth control on the occasion of last coitus. Seventeen had been pregnant for a total of 26 pregnancies; 15 pregnancies resulted in a live birth, seven were kept by the mothers.

Despite the youth of the sample, these histories already suggest high frequencies of contraceptively unprotected coitus, unwanted pregnancy, and unwanted birth. Outcomes tended either to fetal wastage or rejection of the child who then becomes a ward of society.

Author Affiliations
Boston

From the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Aug 15, 1973.

Reprint requests to Studies in Population and the Family, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, 74 Fenwood Rd, Boston 02115 (Dr. Abernethy).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?