 According to the survey, which was conducted of 1900 women who had had abortions, 94% of them had some negative psychological effects, and just 2% of women did not have any.
The University of Minnesota conduct another study, it concluded that 81% of women choosing abortion had preoccupation with their aborted child, 35% had perceived visitations with their child, 54% of mothers had nightmares, and 96% felt they had taken a human life.
Many emotional aspects that can influence upon women’s psychological health who undergo an abortion have been discovered, such as anxiety, depression, anger, loss, guilty feelings, and even suicide. A lot oh these women just were not preparing for the labyrinth of emotions that hit them after abortion. Instead of feeling relieved they have got confusion and anxiety. These women have so called post-abortion syndrome(PAS).
There is a great number of symptoms of post-abortion syndrome. First of all woman must be honest with herself and with feelings she has. It is very important step in diagnosing of post-abortion syndrome. Many women confess to have strong feelings of guilt, confusion, deep loss and many others. Sometimes extreme cases occur, diagnosing of which is very easy. Mostly they include a seventeen-year-old girl, who developed sickness, vomiting and apathy. Evidently the most common symptom of a post-abortion syndrome is guilt. This negative feeling can lead to complexes, fear of sex and possible future infertility, lingering depression.
The reasons of this mental disorder are quite simple. It is usual woman’s behaviour after abortion when she says that everything is fine. But in her following life confusion and feelings of guilt may be surfaced. Why this surfacing anxiety does appear later? Some physicians associate it with the birth of a desired child or during untold counseling. Psychological studies discovered that when women are in any trusting relationships they confess to have many negative feelings over their abortion experience. As it seems surfacing of this disorder may occur because of many reasons. In order to diagnose post-abortion syndrome five strict criteria must be considered. They are stress factors, re-experience, avoidance, associated features, and course. The first and most central is the procedure of an abortion. It may be very traumatic, even more than usual human experience. The second criterion is re-experience, which makes women remember the specifics of the experience. In such a way sometimes woman may have hallucinations, especially on the anniversary of the event. The third criterion is avoidance, which is caused by the feeling of guilt. Woman tries to avoid any thing that can remind her of the event. Women often become separate from other people, sometimes they withdraw from relationship, because they afraid feel love or other positive feelings toward people. That is why they take on hard cold attitude. This stage is very dangerous, because woman often just wishes for the end of her life. Even suicidal thoughts can appear. The fourth criterion is associated features. These are continual symptoms, which have been appeared after abortion. They include outbursts of tears and angry outbursts, insomnia, hyper-vigilance, depression and suicidal thoughts, inability to forgive oneself for surviving. The fifth and final criterion refers only to the length of time. Symptoms may occur after six month after abortion or even longer.
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