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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Ethical aspects of counseling people with mental disorders who are planning their pregnancy

Lobanova IV, Sataev AE, Manaeva TA
About authors

Yaroslavl State Medical University, Yaroslavl, Russia

Correspondence should be addressed: Tatyana A. Manaeva
Yakovlevsky passage, 1, b. 25, Yaroslavl, 152280, Russia; moc.liamg@200aveanam

Received: 2024-11-13 Accepted: 2024-12-05 Published online: 2024-12-24
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This article highlights the ethical aspects that arise when the attending psychiatrist communicates with patients and their family members on the issues of planning a pregnancy. While counseling people with mental disorders about their reproductive plans, it is difficult from an ethical point of view to discuss some issues such as the risks of pathology in an unborn child and a possibility of reducing the risks, in particular the probability of genetic inheritance of a mental disorder; the expediency of discontinuing psychotropic drugs used by the expectant mother and/or father to treat or prevent a mental disorder exacerbations, given that drugs can affect the quality of reproductive biological material, whereas cancellation of therapy is associated with risks to the mental health of expectant parents; the need to inform the patient’s family members about his/her mental disorder, the treatment used and all available personal risks to offspring. Different literature sources, including domestic and foreign ones, were reviewed. The keywords used in literature were “genetics”, “psychiatry”, “ethical aspects of genetic counseling”, “psychopharmacotherapy during pregnancy”, “the effect of psychotropic drugs on spermatogenesis” with filtering by language (Russian and English) and document type. Two own clinical observations are presented. The purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis of ethical aspects of counseling people with mental disorders on pregnancy planning by a psychiatrist.

Keywords: genetic counseling, ethical aspects of counseling, pregnancy planning, psychotropic drugs

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