Policy and Practice for Women's Health
New Approaches to Coping in Mothers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janet Lynne Currie
This paper provides enlightenment on the meaning of the coping experience for new mothers. Coping strategies used by mothers of young children is an important area to explore because feeling in control of one’s environment has important consequences for health, well-being, and feelings of confidence and adequacy in the motherhood role. From a wellness and empowerment perspective, effective coping depends on an individual’s personal evaluation of the situation. Much of the existing research on women’s mental health has not clarified the nature of the coping experience from a subjective wellness perspective, nor taken a grounded theory approach using the participant’s own words and meanings to describe the experience. Well or healthy mothers constitute the majority of the population, however, the focus has been on "not-coping," or unhealthy approaches. Taking a new health promoting approach, this paper will illustrate the strategies mothers use to positively cope with their environment. As past ‘health’ literature has primarily focused on a deficit and illness-based model of coping, this discussion opens up new horizons and dialogues related to what “coping” can actually mean when underpinned by a well-being paradigm.
Abortion Stigma: The Optimal Measure in Research
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Haryana Dhillon, Sarah E Ratcliffe
There is sustained interest and research into abortion stigma from a sociological perspective. AIM: To systematically identify and psychometrically assess measures of abortion stigma. We systematically searched databases PsycINFO, PsycTEST, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Medline, PsycArticles, PubMed, and Web of Science using terms ‘(abortion OR pregnancy termination OR Termination of pregnancy) AND stigma AND measurement’. The review was preregistered with PROSPERO (ID#127339) and adhered to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2015). To assess the psychometric properties of included measures, the COSMIN methodological guidelines for systematic reviews (Prinsen et al., 2018) was used. Author SR screened titles, abstracts, and whole text for those reporting the development, testing, or outcomes of an instrument measuring abortion stigma. Data was extracted by SR and checked for accuracy by a second reviewer (HD). Discrepancies were resolved by discussion. RESULTS: Of 3484 articles identified, 58 were retained and 10 abortion stigma measures identified. Findings indicate measures vary in quality, with those of highest quality most widely used. Measures assess individual and community level stigma for abortion procurers, providers, and the public in Africa, Mexico, and USA. Validated measures of organisational, structural, and framing discourse levels of abortion stigma are scarce, although their presence in the abortion context has been investigated. Several validated abortion stigma measures were identified. Gaps in the measurement of abortion stigma reflect gaps in the research, such as the limited geographical range and limited measurement of higher-level abortion stigma.
