Women with bipolar disorder exhibit a higher lifetime prevalence of unplanned pregnancies when compared to healthy women, according to a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
A team of researchers led by Dr. Eliana Marengo of Favaloro University in Buenos Aires compared 63 women with type I, II, or non-specified bipolar disorder between the ages of 18-55 to 63 healthy controls. “In our sample, near 80% of pregnancies were planned among healthy control women but 33% were intended in the [bipolar] group. Conversely, one third of pregnancies were unplanned among [bipolar women] while just 7% occurred within control women group,” Dr. Marengo and her associates wrote.
In addition, women with bipolar disorder were more likely to report elective interruption of pregnancies than the general study population, with 42.4% of subjects reported having voluntarily terminated a pregnancy, compared with 13.5% of healthy controls of similar socioeconomic status.
“Clinicians must be aware of the reproductive health and take measures to improve better family planning access when treating” young women with biipolar disorder, the researchers wrote.
Read the entire article here: Journal of Affective Disorders 178 (2015) 201–205 ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.02.033 )
