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Short-term Psychiatric Sequelae to Therapeutic Termination of Pregnancy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Bryan D. Lask*
Affiliation:
Maudsley Hospital; Dept. of Psychological Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, W.C.1

Extract

During 1973 there were 169,362 abortions notified to the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health. In a leading article the British Medical Journal (1973) acknowledged that ‘bald statistics cannot help to answer the important question of the nature of the physical and emotional sequelae of termination of pregnancy’. The article called for careful prospective studies to assess such sequelae. This paper is a report of a short-term prospective study of the psychiatric sequelae.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1975 

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