The Relationships among Self-Compassion, Positive and Negative Affect, and Marital Quality in Infertile Women: A Systematic Review

Objective: Infertility has great psychological effects on infertile couple’s marital life, especially for women during infertility treatment. Studying the important psychological factors and their relations with each other on a larger scale could rehabilitate the mental health of infertile women and facilitate the stressful process of infertility treatment. This systematic review aimed to study the literature and relationship among self-compassion, positive and negative affect, and marital quality in infertile women. Methods: To examine this association, comprehensive literature searches were performed to identify relevant articles in English and Persian published from 2000 up to May 2020 and indexed in Pubmed, Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, Jstore, The Cochrane Library, Medline, SID, Irandoc, Civilica, and Magiran. The study eligibility criteria include only infertile couples/women who were clinically diagnosed with infertility. The measure tools which studies used include at least one of the following questionnaires: Self-compassion (SCS), Positive and Negative Affect (PANAS), marital quality (RDAS), and infertility related questionnaires. The study strategy of this review was PICO and the search strategy included terms for Self-compassion (SC), Positive and Negative Affect (PANA), Marital Quality (MQ) in Infertile Women. To identify further eligible studies, the bibliographies of primary studies were searched manually to meet the inclusion criteria. The quality of studies was graded by GRADE from the Cochrane handbook. The studies were investigated in terms of design, risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision, and publication. Results: Self-compassion could play a mediating role in the relationship with positive and negative affect and marital quality in infertile women undergoing infertility treatment. Discussion: This systematic review highlights the importance of addressing the psychological variables which can affect the mental and physiological health of infertile women undergoing infertility treatment.