Mental illness risk ‘rises 30 per cent for women who have abortions’

Women who have an abortion are three times more likely to develop a drug or alcohol addiction and 30 per cent more likely to have mental disorders compared with other women, research has revealed. 

The evidence from two studies comes as the number of women having an abortion in England and Wales exceeded 200,000 for the first time last year.

More abortions – 57,000 – were carried out on women aged 20 to 24 than any other age group. However, there were 4,400 on the under-16s.

Anxiety and drug abuse are the most common mental problems after an abortion, according to a study of 500 women published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Professor David Fergusson, who led the research, said the findings had ‘important implications’ – because more than 90 per cent of British abortions were authorised on the grounds that keeping an unwanted baby would cause the mother mental health problems.

He said: ‘This evidence clearly poses a challenge to the use of psychiatric reasons to justify abortion. There is nothing in this study that would suggest that the termination of pregnancy was associated with lower risks of mental health problems than birth.

‘For some women, abortion is likely to be a stressful and traumatic life event which places them at a modestly increased risk of a range of common mental health problems.’ 


But his team at the University of Otago, New Zealand, said the overall effect of abortion on mental health was small. They estimate it is responsible for between 1.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent of disorders.

A second study shows that women who lose a baby by the age of 21 – either through an abortion or a miscarriage – are three times more likely to develop a drug or alcohol problem than others.

Researcher Kaeleen Dingle, of the University of Queensland, Australia, said: ‘Abortion and miscarriage are stressful life events that have been shown to lead to anxiety, sadness and grief and, for some women, serious depression and substance use disorders.’  continues here

Utter Madness

They say we’re all the same yet evidence seems to suggest otherwise, if we were all the same and difference pertained only to skin colour, then surely incident rates of Sickle cell would range uniformly across the board, rather than almost exclusively affecting peoples from sub-Saharan Africa or indeed their descendents, be they products of miscegenation or otherwise. 

Again in relation to schizophrenia, it seems that non-whites are more prone to the illness, one has only to hark back to the 8th July 1996, when deranged 33 year old Horrett Campbell attacked children having a teddy bears picnic, or we can go back even further to December 17th 1992, when unbalanced Christopher Clunis stabbed an innocent man waiting for a tube train, stabbing him three times in the face one of the blows piercing his eye, the ill-fated victim in question Jonathan Zito never recovered he died from his injuries. 

Again we have the case of one David Morgan who ran amok in a department store, slashing 15 women's throats in December 1994, I should imagine that on the 8th of December this year 15 women will finger the scars on their throats and shudder at the memory. In 1994 again, one Stephen Laudat stabbed Bryan Bennett 82 times in a social services day centre, it would seem that mental illness and those that carry it, present an unacceptable risk to the safety and welfare of us all. 

I leave you with some of the article and a link to the rest, I will say this, luckily even though non-whites are more likely to suffer mental illness its not as if they have power is it, its not as if a non-white has access to weapons of mass destruction, a finger on the button. “oh my god what have they done……….”

Raised Incidence Rates of All Psychoses Among Migrant Groups

Findings From the East London First Episode Psychosis Study 

Jeremy W. Coid, MD; James B. Kirkbride, PhD; Dave Barker, MRCPsych; Fiona Cowden, MRCPsych; Rebekah Stamps, MRCPsych; Min Yang, MD, MPH; Peter B. Jones, PhD 

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(11):1250-1258. 

Context Certain black and minority ethnic groups are at increased risk for psychoses. It is unknown whether risk for second- and later-generation black and minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom is universally increased or varies by ethnicity, population structure, or diagnostic category. 

Objectives To examine whether excess risk in black and minority ethnic groups varies by generation status and to determine whether this is explained solely by an excess of broadly defined schizophrenia. 

Design Population-based epidemiological survey of first-onset psychoses during a 2-year study period. 

Setting Three inner-city boroughs in East London, England. 

Patients Four hundred eighty-four patients with first-episode psychosis aged 18 to 64 years. 

Main Outcome Measures Nonaffective or affective psychoses according to the DSM-IV. 

Results Raised incidence of both nonaffective and affective psychoses were found for all of the black and minority ethnic subgroups compared with white British individuals. The risk of nonaffective psychoses for first and second generations varied by ethnicity (likelihood ratio test, P = .06). Only black Caribbean second-generation individuals were at significantly greater risk compared with their first-generation counterparts (incidence rate ratio, 1.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.1-2.4). No significant differences between first and second generations were observed in other ethnic groups. Asian women but not men of both generations were at increased risk for psychoses compared with white British individuals. Patterns were broadly upheld for the affective psychoses. 

Conclusions Both first- and second-generation immigrants were at elevated risk for both nonaffective and affective psychoses, but this varied by ethnicity. Our results suggest that given the same age structure, the risk of psychoses in first and second generations of the same ethnicity will be roughly equal. We suggest that socioenvironmental factors operate differentially by ethnicity but not generation status, even if the exact specification of these stressors differs across generations. Research should focus on differential rates of psychoses by ethnicity rather than between generations. Continues here