Thank you to guest blogger Zoe for allowing us to share her thoughts on the recently reported case of a woman who was granted legal access to abortion following a challenge to her ability to consent. This is cross-posted on Zoe's own blog 'The Fementalists'.
I have been following this case closely as I also have
bipolar disorder and as a young woman with a male partner I worry a lot about
the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy, to say nothing of worrying about
what my future holds in terms of planned pregnancy. It was stated in the Court
that the woman in this case had stopped taking her medication and thus
relapsed, culminating with her being detained under the Mental Health Act.
However, many medications for bipolar are not suitable to take when pregnant as
they can cause birth defects such as neural
tube defects, heart defects, and developmental delay or neurobehavioural
problems. Thus many people have to stop taking their medication if they
wish to continue with their pregnancies. This
is believed to be what happened in the “SB” case. While this may seem like
a relatively minor thing, the consequences of this can be devastating. Rates of
relapse into bipolar mania and psychosis are estimated at 50% to 75%
respectively and WebMD
states that “Pregnant women or new
mothers with bipolar disorder have seven times the risk of hospital admissions
than pregnant women who do not have bipolar disorder.” So clearly the risk
of being detained under the Mental Health Act also greatly increases during
pregnancy because of the additional problems caused by stopping medication.
For me, this represents the nightmare scenario. Finding
myself pregnant with a wanted foetus only to stop my medication, relapse and be
detained under the Mental Health Act, and to then decide that for my own health
I would like a termination and be denied it because it is argued that I lacked
capacity. It is truly a terrifying prospect to find yourself unable to control
your own body because you have a mental illness. Much more needs to be done to
provide perinatal care for women with severe and enduring mental illness to
ensure that a situation like this never arises again. Fortunately in this case
the judge has made the right decision and SB is expected to have an abortion in
the following days. Arguably, this situation should never have arisen in the
first place.
I would love one of the national bodies to push reproductive healthcare for people with mental health needs higher up the agenda. It's a complex field and I see informal forms of manipulation and coercion used far too often. Student mental health nurses get no/next to no training in this area,and far too often advice and decisions are made based on opinion rather than evidence (of which there is little because it's under-researched). Thanks for your interesting blog.
ReplyDeleteKudos to the judge on this occasion. It would have been an affront indeed.
ReplyDelete