The psychological effects of hysterectomy.

Abstract

Although hysterectomy remains one of the most common forms of surgery to which women are likely to be exposed the psychological implications remain obscure. Psychological factors have been investigated both as independent and dependent variables but a variety of procedural and design shortcomings leave importance of such factors obscure. The more common faults include an undue emphasis on retrospective designs, inadequate controls, contamination of assessment procedures and failure to quantify and adequately analyse results. The present article concludes with an examination of those variables which ought to be considered by investigators planning research in this area. RESUMEMeme si I'hysterectomie demeure I'une des formes de chirurgie les plus communes auxquelles les femmes sont exposees, on en conna'it encore peu les implications psychologiques. On a recherche ('importance des facteurs psychologiques aussi bien comme variables dependantes qu'independantes, mais cette importance demeure encore obscure a cause d'un ensemble d'insuffisances touchant aux techniques ou aux plans de recherches utilises. Parmi les defauts les plus frequents, on pent citer le recours abusif aux modeles retrospectifs, I'insuffisance des controles, la contamination des techniques devaluation, le defaut de quantification des resultats et I'insuffisance des analyses faites. L'article se termine par une etude des variables dont devraient tenir compte les chercheurs interesses a ce domaine.

Psychiatric morbidity following hysterectomy in Egypt

“…Studies have found psychological morbidity such as anxiety and depression to be associated with hysterectomy [16,17]. Flory et al [9] reported that hysterectomy had negative short-and long-term psychological consequences for some women.…”

Surgical menopause

“…1 In a 1977 review of 21 studies of women who underwent hysterectomy, 15 studies showed undesirable psychological reactions to hysterectomy, whereas 6 showed no effect. 2 These early studies led to the notion that hysterectomy might result in increased psychological morbidity and psychiatric problems. These studies, however, had a number of methodological limitations.…”

An audit of abdominal hysterectomy over a decade in a district hospital

“…Hysterectomy has a low mortality (Centerwall 1981;Richards 1978) and little short-term morbidity, but there is controversy over the longterm effects, both psychiatric and physical. Some studies indicate beneficial psychiatric effects (Richards 1978;Coppen et al 1981;Bragg 1965;Meikle 1977) others state that hysterectomy is frequently followed by depression requiring treatment (Richards 1973(Richards , 1974Melody 1962;Barglow et al 1965;Barker 1968;Hollender 1960;Meikle 1977).…”