The family planning attitudes, practices, and motivations of mental patients.

Abstract

The family planning attitudes, practices and motivations were studied by interview in 21 patients of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, 18-45 years of age, with varying racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds and a broad range of mental illness. Without investigating the relationships of mental illness to marital discord, an impressive frequency of divorce, unhappy marriages and lack of communication between the spouses was noted. Frequency patterns of sexual intercourse and orgasm in these patients reflected normal patterns as determined by sexual research. The patients also closely resembled normal women in responses on desired family size and the right of women to control the number of children they have. Behavior was found to differ strongly from attitudes in that contraceptive knowledge and approval, though low, was comparable to normal women, but actual contraceptive use was infrequent with a total of 26 unwanted pregnancies reported in 13 of the women. 9 of the unwanted pregnancies were aborted and 8 of the 13 women felt that raising the unwanted child contributed to their mental illness. Though all the patients thought hospitals should provide the postnatal family planning counseling, contraceptive motivation was determined to be poor in these women due to excessive dependency needs, passive-aggressive ambivalence towards men, and excessive use of the mechanism of denial. Greater communication between doctor and patient is needed on sexual attitudes and practices.