Infertility And Fertility Research

One of the greatest achievements in a couple’s life is bringing new life into the world. With expectations to have children, few ever contemplate the possibility that they will be unable to do so. Fertility holds high value in most cultures as the wish for a child is one of the most basic of all human motivations. For women, pregnancy is a developmental milestone that is highly emphasized by our culture, (Kainz, 2001). Although, the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that 8- 12% of couples globally are personally affected by infertility (Hsiu and Kuo, 2002), an enormous stress that can rank among the most emotionally challenging crises of adulthood. When discussing fertility issues, it is important to note the difference between
More often, infertility is in response to avoidable factors, such as sexually transmitted and other infectious diseases, inadequate health care, and harmful environmental materials (Prüss-Üstün & Corvalán, 2006). In the mid-1980’s researchers began contemplating the theory that psychosomatic stress caused infertility. Instead, they found that psychosomatic stress was a result of infertility (Shatford, 1988). Observation and research have documented the emotional impact of infertility. Menning used the psychological stages of ‘the grief and loss model’ to explain the infertility experience (Menning, 1982). As she described the response to infertility, she also discussed the guilt, anger, abandonment and most integral, depression that follows the detection of compromised
Ways through which depression could directly affect infertility involve the physiology of depression such as disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, elevated prolactin levels, as well as thyroid dysfunction (Meller, 1997). The usual effects of infertility describe depression and anxiety. A number of studies have discovered that the occurrence of depression in infertile couples seeking infertility treatment is considerably greater than infertile couples (Domar 1992; Demyttenaere 1998;