The mental health of adults born of unwanted pregnancies, their siblings, and matched controls: a 35-year follow-up study from Prague, Czech Republic.

This study tested the hypothesis that being born of an unwanted pregnancy is a risk factor for poor mental health in adulthood. Self-report and objective data were collected at ages 28 to 31 and 32 to 35 years in a cohort of nearly 200 "unwanted" subjects born after their mothers had been twice denied an abortion for the same pregnancy. The same data were collected in a sociodemographically matched control cohort of "accepted" subjects whose mothers had not requested an abortion, and from siblings of both the unwanted subjects and the accepted control subjects. Logistic regression analyses conducted with several indicators of poor mental health in adulthood as dependent variables brought partial support for the hypothesis. Specifically, unwanted subjects became psychiatric patients (especially psychiatric inpatients) more frequently than their siblings and the accepted controls. Criminality, alcohol-related disorders, and heavy smoking were not associated with unwanted pregnancy.