Previous research suggested that women who had abortions had higher rates of suicide attempts and antidepressant use, but those higher rates were seen both in the year before the abortion and in the year after.In the same Danish cohort, there were small increased risks for any first psychotropic medication prescription in the first year after both medication and procedural abortion compared with the year before an abortion.Outside experts argued that a marginal increase in psychotropic medications following abortion is not "surprising" and "could be explained by factors associated with the abortion rather than the abortion itself."
The risk for first psychotropic medication prescription increased slightly in the year following an abortion, but this risk no longer met statistical significance after adjustment for multiple statistical tests, according to a Danish population-based cohort study.
Using conventional levels of statistical significance, there were small increased risks for any first psychotropic medication prescription claim in the first year after both medication abortion (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.10, 95% CI 1.02-1.19, P=0.01) and procedural abortion (IRR 1.09, 95% CI 1.01-1.16, P=0.02) compared with the year before an abortion, reported Julia R. Steinberg, PhD, of the University of Maryland in College Park, and co-authors.
