Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology

Adolescent pregnancy and antidepressant in pregnancy: literature overview on a case

Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2014; 24: Supplement S214-S215
Keywords : pregnancy, adolescent, drug
Read: 454 Published: 17 February 2021

Adolescent period is a transition from childhood to adulthood by biological, psychological and social changes; The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that adolescence occurs between 10-19 years of age. Sixteen million girls between the age of 15-19 and two million girls under the age of 15 give birth worldwide every year. Nowadays, one of every five girls and in underdeveloped areas, one of every three girls gives birth under the age of 18. A 15 years old girl was referred to us by judicial authorities. In the anamnesis, we noted that the patient went to her boyfriend’s house 3-4 months ago, after he told her “come to our house, my sister is here also”, when the patient saw that there was nobody in the house. She got disturbed and wanted to leave but the boyfriend did not let her go, calmed her down saying “do not worry, I will not do anything”. He brought a beverage to drink; she did not remember what happened after drinking it. When she regained consciousness, she was lying together with her boyfriend, she felt so bad and the boyfriend deceived her with false marriage promise. The patient found out that she was pregnant before coming to our policlinic, when we asked her opinion about the coming child; the patient said, “she absolutely did not want to have an abortion, the child kept her hold on to life”. In the mental status examination, it was noted that she felt so unhappy, regret, she could not sleep at night, could not eat properly, wanted to die but would not do it because of her baby, that the incident kept coming to her mind. The patient had dysphoric affect, and depressive thoughts were dominant in her thought content. Major depression diagnosis was considered in this patient. Drug use in pregnancy, although it is generally a concern of adult psychiatry has become a common condition in child and adolescent psychiatry along with the decrease in age at first sexual intercourse. According to Turkish Penal Code article 99, it is possible to terminate the pregnancy until the 20th week in pregnancies resulting from sexual abuse. It is recommended that non-pharmacological treatments should be tried first in treatment of mild and moderate depression in pregnancy. Regarding patients with more severe depression, psychotherapy alone may not be enough, therefore adding an antidepressant agent to the treatment may be necessary. Antidepressant use in pregnancy has been shown to increase in recent years. In one study, it was shown that antidepressant drug use increased approximately fourfold between 1996-2005 and antidepressants were prescribed to 8% of pregnant women between 2004-2005. Our case was presented to draw attention to this topic, because adolescent pregnancies have become more common, it is thought that the number of adolescent pregnancies would keep increasing and in addition, use of drugs in pregnancy and studies on this subject have increased.

EISSN 2475-0581