Psychiatric aspects of female sterilization

Follow-up of 151 women who had been sterilized for social or gynaecological reasons one to three years earlier showed that 146 were completely satisfied with the results of the operation on their health and on their sexual relationships with their husbands. The five who were dissatisfied either wished they could still conceive or found the operation had not produced the effect hoped for. On the basis of this study we believe that adverse psychiatric sequelae of sterilization can be kept to a minimum with careful selection of patients. Women should be over 30 or if younger should have had two or more children, and the operation should not be performed at childbirth, in the neonatal period, or during a postabortive depression.