Literature Review on Provision of Appropriate and Accessible ...

PAGE 143
to have a significant impact on women’s freedom to choose to take on
gendered roles.
Areschoug (2005: 166), reviewing Swedish discourses related to birth
control and adults with intellectual disabilities from 1967 – 2003,
discusses a situation in the mid to late eighties and early nineties where
women with intellectual disabilities withdrew from services (including,
in one instance, an antenatal clinic) and were anxious to keep their
pregnancy a secret for fear of control being taken from them or of being
persuaded to have an abortion.
Support to People with an Intellectual Disability who are
Accessible
and Appropriate of Provision on <strong>Review</strong> <strong>Literature</strong>
Experiencing Crisis Pregnancy
McConnell et al. (2008) examined whether poor mental health in
mothers with intellectual disability was already evident during their
pregnancy. The study involved 40 women with intellectual disability or
self-reported learning difficulties, who participated in a series of preand
post-partum interviews. A high level of anxiety was more common
than either depression or stress in the sample. The authors propose that
one possible explanation for this finding (in line with previous research)
is the significant opposition to childbearing that these women face,
and their fear that control over their pregnancy and their baby will be
taken away from them by others (Booth & Booth, 1994; Llewellyn, 1994;
Mayes et al., 2006). They recognised that further research was needed
to determine whether the odds of pre-partum depression, anxiety and
stress are greater in women with intellectual disability compared to the
general population in Australia, and if so, to what extent. The findings
nevertheless suggest that improved measures are needed to alleviate
these negative emotional states during pregnancy, which are often
compounded by the women’s cognitive deficits (McConnell et al., 2008).
Mayes et al. (2006) investigated the lived experience of pregnancy
through multiple interviews over time with 17 pregnant women with
intellectual disability. To varying degrees, each woman negotiated her
support networks to exclude people who were perceived as a threat and
to include those who were supportive. The women’s agency in doing so
was a direct response to their anxiety about having control taken from
them, and the fear of decisions being made by others about them and
their unborn children.