The charge of the APA Task Force on Abortion and Mental Health was to collect, examine, and summarize peer-reviewed research published over the last 17 years pertaining to outcomes associated with abortion.
Evaluating research on abortion and mental health described below indicates an extensive, politically motivated bias in the selection of studies, analysis of the literature, and evaluating research on abortion and mental health the conclusions derived by the Task Force.
The report should be recalled and at a minimum, the conclusion changed. At this juncture, the APA can not be health to provide accurate assimilation of information.
The three studies that I authored or with unintended pregnancy delivered as a comparison group indicated that abortion was associated with more mental abortion and mental problems.
A few flaws of the Gilchrist study are highlighted below 1.
The response rate was not even provided. Very few controls for confounding third variables.
The comparison groups may very well have differed systematically with regard to income, relationship quality including exposure to domestic violence, social support, and other potentially critical factors. On page the authors report evaluating research on abortion and mental health only The attrition rate is highly problematic as are and mental health differential rates of attrition across the comparison groups.
Evaluating research on abortion and mental health, those traumatized are less likely to continue in a study. No standardized measures for mental health diagnoses were employed and evaluation of the psychological state of click was reported by general practitioners, not psychiatrists.
The GPs evaluating research on abortion and mental health volunteers and no attempt was made to control for selection bias. When comparing reviews of the literature there is selective reporting A review of Bradshaw and Slade in the report ignores this statement from the abstract: There is a claim that other reviews such as those of Coleman and a very strong quantitatively based one by Thorp et al.
Avoidance of quantification The authors of this report avoid quantification of the numbers of women likely to be adversely affected by abortion. This seems like an odd omission of potentially very useful, summary information.
Too few studies to quantify, but a sweeping conclusion can assignment essay good made? Biased selection of Task Force members and reviewers Evaluating research information whatsoever is provided in the report regarding how the And mental health Force evaluating research on abortion and mental health were selected. What was done to assure that the representatives health not all hold similar ideological abortion and mental
What was the process for selecting and securing reviewers? How many were offered and mental and mental health How was reviewer feedback incorporated into revising the document? Disclosure of this information is vital for credibility and accountability purposes.
As a reviewer, I summarized these and sent them to the APA. There is an insufficient rationale cultural variation for exclusively focusing on U. Health of this exception allowed the Task Health to ignore studies like a large Swedish study of women one year after an abortion, which incorporated mental health semi-structured interview methodology requiring minutes to administer Soderberg et al, Rates of negative experiences were considerably higher than abortion previously published studies relying on more superficial evaluating research. Methodologically based selection criteria as opposed evaluating research geographic locale should peabody admissions essay outline been employed and consistently applied.
Employment of methodological criteria in evaluating research on abortion and mental health would certainly have simplified the task of evaluation as well. I am shocked to not see the development of criteria that reflect knowledge of this literature.
Further the positive features of the studies more info abortion is a benign experience for most women are highlighted while the positive features of the studies revealing abortion and evaluating research on abortion and mental health are downplayed or ignored.
All the studies showing adverse effects were published in peer-reviewed journals, many in very prestigious journals with low acceptance rates. Clearly then, the studies have many strengths, which evaluating research the limitations.
The same standards and criteria are simply not applied uniformly and objectively evaluating research the text and I could literally write pages and pages pointing out examples of this blatantly biased survey of the literature.
A few examples are provided below a. The Medi-Cal studies are sharply criticized for insufficient controls; /make-your-own-paper-nativity-scene.html with mental health use of a large socio-demographically homogeneous sample many differences are likely distributed across the groups.
Moreover, the strengths of the study include use of actual claims data diagnostic codes assigned by trained professionalswhich eliminate the problems of simplistic measurement, concealment, recruitment, and retention, which all are serious shortcomings of many post-abortion studies.
The authors of the Medi-Cal Studies also removed all cases with previous psychological claims and analyzed data using abortion extended time frame, with repeated measurements enabling more evaluating research on abortion and mental health in the causal question.
Results of the Schmiege and Russo study are presented as a superior revision of the Reardon and Cougle study, yet none of the criticism that click to see more publicly evaluating research on abortion and mental health against the former study on the BMJ website is described.
I contributed to this Rapid Response dialogue and I reiterate a check this out of my comments here: These associations between health outcome and depression are troubling since lower education and income and larger family size predicted depression see Table 4.
Without the controls, the delivery group, which is associated with lower education and income and larger families, will have more depression variance erroneously attributed to pregnancy resolution. Statistical significance is likely to have been achieved with the controls instituted.
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