The tendency of women who have had an abortion to experience depression following the procedure is “widespread globally,” a recently published study suggests.
BMC Psychiatry, an open access, peer-reviewed journal, published a study late last month by a group of Ethiopian medical researchers led by Natnael Atnafu Gebeyehu and Kirubel Dagnaw Tegegne titled “Global prevalence of post-abortion depression: systematic review and Meta-analysis.”
The study, which analyzed 15 papers that had a total of 18,207 research participants based on a total of 657 articles, found that, overall, 34.5% of women who had an abortion experienced depression.
“The prevalence of post-abortion depression varied based on geographic location, World Health Organization (WHO) regions, World Bank income category, screening approach, and study design,” explained the researchers.