| Summary: | "Since the birth of the first in vitro fertilization baby 30 years ago, assisted reproductive technology continues to advance exponentially. Despite this progress in medical technology, the psychological understanding of related emotional, ethical, and moral dilemmas needs to be further explored. Written by specialists in the field of reproductive counseling, this volume will help clinicians to understand and effectively treat the unique needs of clients who have experienced adverse reproductive events, which include infertility, miscarriage, perinatal or newborn loss, and premature or other complicated births. Illustrated with numerous clinical examples, this volume will help mental health professionals gain both insight and clinical skill in working with this complex and growing clinical population. The rapid advance in reproductive medicine has created options for family building that would have seemed like science fiction only a few decades ago, and thousands of couples worldwide have benefited from it. Medical progress has not been limited to infertility treatment. Premature births, which used to claim the lives of so many infants, can now be routinely managed, and even infants born as early as 24 weeks can sometimes survive. The scientific understanding of miscarriages, genetic anomalies, hormonal imbalances, and menopause has done much to help patients whose reproductive health has suffered. But along with the medical technology, a multitude of emotional, ethical, and moral dilemmas have emerged, and the psychological understanding of the impact of such technology has lagged sorely behind. Although many books have been written about how to get pregnant, or as personal journals of a reproductive difficulty, or about how to cope with stress, relatively little has been written to help mental health professionals understand and effectively treat patients in therapy who have reproductive problems. This book is written to fill that gap" --
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