Bidang Kajian : Kanak-kanak
Pelajar/Pengkaji Oleh: Yasmin Hanani Binti Rozley
Alamat Emel: yhanani95@gmail.com
Tarikh: 06/10/2020
Abstrak Kajian
Being pregnant out of wedlock has always been unacceptable in Asian countries such as Malaysia as it is considered bringing shame and dishonor towards oneself, family and the society. Lacking of support, knowledge and experience caused these teenagers to make wrong decision and also put their own life and their infant’s life in danger which is by opting abortion. This may explained the rise of baby dumping cases in Malaysia. The purpose of this study was to determine the risk factors of antenatal depression among unwed pregnant teenagers in Malaysia where three factors were focused which were personal background (trimester period and family socioeconomic status), personality, and social support. This study utilized mixed-method design using the purposive sampling and 24 teenagers with age range of 13 to 19 years in two welfare homes were involved in this study for the quantitative data and 18 teenagers from TSP were involved with the interview for the qualitative data. One-way ANOVA analysis was used to compare the means between trimester period, family socioeconomic status, and antenatal depression. The result revealed that both of these factors did not significantly influence the level of antenatal depression among these teenagers although majority of them were at risk of having antenatal depression. Pearson Correlation was also used for the quantitative analysis and the findings showed that there were significant relationships between personality (r = -.426*, p < .05), social support (r = -.516**, p < .01), and antenatal depression among unwed pregnant teenagers whereas trimester period and family socioeconomic status did not correlate with antenatal depression. Based on the interview findings, 56.25% of the teenagers got pregnant due to voluntary sexual intercourse due to mutual interest. These teens did not have any pregnancy insight since most of them of them had irregular menstrual. Social media such as Instagram was the major platform for these young girls to meet their partner before having a close relationship. Half of these teenagers had thoughts of opting for abortion after being pregnant but only a few that has attempted abortions. Some of the reasons that prevented them from aborting include having religious values, stomach being visible, and receiving sufficient support from family and partner. This current study can be used as a guideline and reference for future researchers since there were not many research conducted on unwed pregnant teenagers in Malaysia. More research should be done on this clinical sample in order to understand them better.