Experiences and Living Conditions of Unintended Pregnant Women - Offers of Counseling and Care (ELSA)
The research project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health and is being carried out in a network of six universities or institutions, each of which is responsible for its own sub-project. The overall goal of the ELSA project is to draw conclusions for improving the health and psychosocial care of unintentionally pregnant women on the basis of scientific and empirical findings.
In the subproject at Freie Universität, the interplay between traumatic experiences, the regulation of the psychobiological stress system (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), and the mental health of women after an unintended pregnancy is being researched. The extent to which traumatic experiences increase the risk of developing a mental disorder following a biographical event such as an unintended pregnancy and the extent to which this is mediated by psychoneuroendocrine processes will be examined.
Specifically, women who chose to terminate or carry to term an unintended pregnancy will be surveyed cross-sectionally and longitudinally through a standardized diagnostic telephone interview and with separate online questionnaires. The method of hair cortisol analysis, in which hair strands of the women are examined in the laboratory, also allows conclusions to be drawn about the regulation of the psychobiological stress system during and after pregnancy.
The identification of factors that promote the development of psychological disorders after unintended pregnancies is important in order to be able to offer affected women suitable preventive measures or early therapeutic assistance.