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Attitude and perceptions toward miscarriage: a survey of a general population in Japan

Journal of Human Genetics volume 65, pages 155–164 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Miscarriage is the greatest complication of pregnancy, and 70–80% of early miscarriages are mostly due to chromosomal abnormalities in the embryo. There is no evidence that stress is a direct cause of miscarriage. Despite these findings, in a national US survey on the causes of miscarriage, many Americans mistakenly attributed miscarriage to the mental state or behavior of the women. We conducted a survey to assess public attitudes and perceptions regarding the cause and prevalence of miscarriage in Japan. We sent out a questionnaire consisting of 17 questions. The 5000 recipients consisted of men and women (1:1 ratio) aged 18–69 who resided in Aichi Prefecture. A total of 1257 recipients (25%) responded to the questionnaire and 1219 valid respondents (24%) were included in the analyses. Of these, 62% considered a genetic abnormality of the fetus as the cause of miscarriage. Participants who were female, highly educated, married and healthy gave significantly more correct responses. On the other hand, the majority wrongly assumed that a stressful event (65%) and long-standing stress (75%) to be causes of miscarriage. Participants who had no history of miscarriage as well as males answered significantly more incorrectly. Sixty-five percent of respondents thought that miscarriage occurred less than 15% of all pregnancies. Among respondents who had experienced miscarriage personally, 53 and 36% felt guilty and lonely, respectively. Many respondents blamed the woman for the miscarriage either in terms of her behavior or mental stress and considered the frequency of miscarriage to be lower than it actually is.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Aichi Prefectural Government Department of Health Public Welfare Children and Families Division for its help in viewing the Basic Resident Register in order to extract the subjects for the survey.

Funding

This study was supported by a Grant-in-aid for Nagoya City University.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nagoya City University, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Nagoya, Japan

    Chihiro Banno, Mayumi Sugiura-Ogasawara, Shoko Ide, Tamao Kitaori & Takeshi Sato

  2. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Nagoya City University, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Nagoya, Japan

    Takeshi Ebara

  3. Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagoya City University, Nagoya, Japan

    Kiwamu Ando

  4. Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya City University, Nagoya, Japan

    Yoko Morita

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  1. Chihiro Banno
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  4. Shoko Ide
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Contributions

MSO designed the present survey, analyzed the data, and CB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. TE was responsible for analyzing the data. MSO, KA, and YM were responsible for preparing a questionnaire and supervision of the study. CB, SI, TS, and TK were responsible for data acquisition. All authors interpreted the data, contributed to the writing of the manuscript and revised it critically for important intellectual content.

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Correspondence to Mayumi Sugiura-Ogasawara.

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Banno, C., Sugiura-Ogasawara, M., Ebara, T. et al. Attitude and perceptions toward miscarriage: a survey of a general population in Japan. J Hum Genet 65, 155–164 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s10038-019-0694-1

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