Psychiatric admissions and choice of abortion.

A statistical analysis is presented of the intensities of admissions to psychiatric hospitals among women in Denmark who either gave birth to a child in the year 1975 or had an induced abortion in the same year. The models used are time-continuous Markov and semi-Markov processes, and the methods employed include non-parametric and semi-parametric analysis of counting processes. The influence of prior psychiatric admissions on the choice of terminating the pregnancy with an induced abortion is also studied.