Elsevier

Fertility and Sterility

Volume 95, Issue 2, February 2011, Pages 717-721
Fertility and Sterility

Psychological factor
Comparison of multiple psychological distress measures between men and women preparing for in vitro fertilization

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2010.09.043Get rights and content

Objective

To compare multiple measures of psychological distress between men and women preparing for IVF.

Setting

Outpatient, academic infertility clinic.

Patient(s)

One hundred sixty-two consecutive couples presenting for infertility treatment with IVF.

Intervention(s)

Measures were completed as part of a routine, infertility-focused psychological evaluation, including the Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, State-Trait Anger Inventory, and Impact of Events Scale.

Main Outcome Measure(s)

Scores of above psychological questionnaires.

Result(s)

Psychological distress scores were statistically significantly higher among women than men for symptoms of depression, state anxiety, infertility specific distress, and general perceived stress. However, aside from infertility-specific distress (d = .43), effect sizes for the paired differences between females and males ranged from d = .18 to .23.

Conclusion(s)

Women consistently scored higher on multiple measures of psychological distress than their male partners in the context of preparing for IVF. Comparison of infertility-specific distress scores yielded the largest statistically and clinically significant difference compared with traditional measures of general depression and anxiety symptoms.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

We received Institutional Review Board approval to conduct a retrospective review of all couples seeking IVF who presented to the Mayo Clinic from 2005 to 2008. We identified 186 consecutive couples undergoing IVF evaluation during that time; 89.8% of the patients and 95.2% of the partners agreed to the use of clinical psychometric assessments and other medical record data for research purposes. This yielded a final study sample of 162 couples with access to information from both the patient

Results

Study participants were primarily married (98.8% of heterosexual couples), white couples (85.7% of the 112 couples who both reported their race). Mean age (SD) differed significantly between women and men 32.7 (4.6) versus 35.1 (7.3; P<.001). Mean duration of infertility was 4.2 (median 3.3) years, mean infertility treatment duration was 1.9 (median 1) years, 36 (22.5%) of the patients had experienced miscarriage, and 122 (76.3%) of the patients did not have biological children. Causal factors

Discussion

Our data support the conclusion that both women and men experience significant infertility-specific psychological distress in the context of IVF. The majority of patients endorsed clinically significant symptom severity. Women endorsed higher psychological distress across multiple symptom domains, using methods of both statistical and clinical significance.

In comparison with existing literature, the current study provides convergent validity for high rates of infertility-specific distress.

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    C.L.W. has nothing to disclose. S.L.E. has nothing to disclose. S.E.W. has nothing to disclose. A.L.W. has nothing to disclose. C.C. has nothing to disclose.

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    Copyright © 2011 American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.