Brenda Major

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Biography

Brenda N. Major is a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara.[1] She has published a number of studies on abortion with an emphasis on attributing negative effects of abortion with stigma caused by anti-abortion protests. She was a co-author of the 1989 APA task force report which criticized Koop's failure to white-wash abortion.


Criticism of Major's Spin on Her Findings

Quote from Reardon Letter regarding Study by Brenda Major.[1]

In a follow-up study of 442 women who had abortions, Major's research team tracked depression scores using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) one hour post-abortion, one month post-abortion, and two years post-abortion.[2][3] At the two year follow-up, approximately 50% of the women either refused to participate in the follow-up evaluation or could not be contacted. Among those who did participate in the two year post-abortion assessment, depression scores were significantly higher than their one hour post-abortion scores, though higher one hour post-abortion scores were also significantly predictive of higher depression scores two years later.[3]
In addition to these important findings, the researchers found that 24.5% of the women remaining in their sample at the two-year followup had scores above the cutoff for clinical depression on the BSI depression scale.[3]
Curiously, rather than registering alarm, the researchers’ erroneously asserted that the depression rate detected in their study was only slightly over that of American women in general by reference to a study of national prevalence conducted by Blazer, Kessler, McGonagle, and Swartz,[40] which indicated a 20% lifetime prevalence rate of major depression among women 15-35 years of age. The reason this was assertion was erroneous is that the researchers mistakenly compared their scores for depression in the most recent month to Blazer’s findings regarding lifetime prevalence rates. Fortunately, Blazer’s group also reported the prevalence of current (30 day) major depression for females aged 15-24 and 25-34, as 8.2% and 4.3% respectively.[4] Thus, when the proper comparison is made for most recent month depression rates, these follow-up abortion studies4,5 actually found that depression rates two years after abortion were 3 to 5 times higher among women who have had an abortion compared to the general population of similarly aged women.
In my opinion, this finding that one-fourth of women two years after their abortion had high depression scores should have motivated the researchers to encourage more detailed pre-abortion screening and post-abortion counseling. But curiously, the authors appeared to generally dismiss the importance of their own findings on the basis of the hypothesis that giving birth to an unwanted pregnancy would likely incur equal or greater psychological price,[2] a theme echoed by Schmiege and Russo.[5] This is an extremely important hypothesis, but it is also a hypothesis, which up to that point, had never been tested. In the most recent, comprehensive review of the literature on emotional reactions to abortion and future research priorities,[6] the absence of studies examining psychological adjustment following an unintended pregnancy using control groups (comparing those who abort to those who carry to term) is identified as a major shortcoming of the existing literature. Our original study appears to be the first to employ this very appropriate control group.[7] We have continued to pursue this direction with two other studies that have compared the psychological wellbeing of women who carry unintended pregnancies to term with women who have abortions: one finding higher risk of long-term generalized anxiety disorder among women who abort[8] and the other finding higher rates of substance abuse.[9]

References

  1. David Reardon. Study Fails to Address Our Previous Findings and Subject to Misleading Interpretations BMJ.com (1 November 2005)
  2. 2.0 2.1 Major B, Cozzarelli C, Cooper ML et al: Psychological responses of women after first trimester abortion. Arch Gen Psych, 2000; 57(8): 777-84.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cozzarelli, C., Major, B., Karrasch, A., & Fuegen, K. (2000). Women’s experiences of and reactions to antiabortion picketing. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2000;22:265-275.
  4. Blazer DG, Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Swartz MS. The prevalence and distribution of major depression in a national community sample: The National Comorbidity Survey. American Journal of Psychiatry. 1994; 151, 979-986.
  5. Schmiege S, Russo NF. Depression and unwanted first pregnancy: longitudinal cohort study
  6. Coleman PK, Reardon DC, Strahan T, Cougle JR. The psychology of abortion: a review and suggestions for future research. Psychology and Health 2005; 20(2):237-271.
  7. Reardon DC, Cougle JR. Depression and unintended pregnancy in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: a cohort study. British Medical Journal. 2002; 324:151-2. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/324/7330/151
  8. Cougle JR, Reardon DC, Coleman PK. Generalized anxiety following unintended pregnancies resolved through childbirth and abortion: a cohort study of the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. J Anxiety Disord. 2005;19(1):137-42.
  9. Reardon DC, Coleman PK, Cougle JR. Substance use associated with unintended pregnancy outcomes in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Am. J. Drug and Alcohol Abuse. 2004; 26(1):369 - 383.