Onm-7: Psychosocial Aspect of Infertility

Background: A common wish which is found in almost all humans is desire for having a child. Infertility depression is considered as life and identity crises. The intertwined network of physical, mental, and social factors affect the infertile person. The elements, relationship and activities of this complex network determine the way the person responds to the problem of infertility. Beside all the factors that lead to depression, the infertile people are more susceptible to depression due to specific factors related to their infertility. It is expected that demographic factors, as a part of social background, are effective in how an individual meets the problems resulted from infertility. Beside demographic issues marital satisfaction is another factor which is effective in life satisfaction and nervous health of infertile couples. This research is designed in order to study the relation of demographic factors on the nervous disorders in the fertile women as well as identifying the relation of sexual disorder and infertility. Materials and Methods: This research is a qualitativequantitative study. In this study, 100 infertile women were selected through simple random sampling. They were studied by means of two questionnaires, MHQ andSexual Disorder Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS software by t test and statistical analyses. Results: The results of this research indicated that there is no significant relationship between the age of the infertile women and their anxiety and depression score (the average age of the subjects was 31.2 years old.) there was a significant relationship between the education level and attitude towards infertility. The subjects with very low level of education (primary school) and those with high level of education (master degree and higher) were affected more. In subjects with high level of education the type of attitude they had toward infertility caused them to lose their social reputation, instability in their social status, and the feeling of being belittled in the society. Occupational and high income of the espouse increased confidence of the women under costly treatments. Most of these couples were sensitive toward attitudes of their relatives and associates. The women who lived in the house of one of their parents had higher level of depression. Change of attitude in the infertile women after diagnosis had affected sexual relations in the following ways: dissatisfaction with sexual relations (50%), disorder in the couples’ relations (47%), reduction of intercourse (32%), Libido (67%), lack of orgasm in more than half of sexual intercourses (60%). 57% of infertile women suffered from depression and 67.2% suffered from anxiety.Conclusion: Infertility is not a merely medical problem but it faces many of infertile couples with crisis in different aspects of their lives. Identifying prevalent emotional problems among these couples, offering consultation services in the first visit considering the cultural, educational, and social level of couples, establishing sexual consultation centers in the clinics of infertility, nutritional consultation, and improving the quality of life along with medical treatments are considered important in order to reduce these problems.