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Updated: May 19, 2026

Treatment Model for Young Patients with Psychogenic Erectile Dysfunction and Resultant Infertility
Published on: May 30, 2025
Medical successes and couples' psychological problems in assisted reproduction treatment: a narrative based medicine
Martina Smorti1, Andrea Smorti
1Free University of Bolzano, Faculty of Education, Bolzano, Italy. andrea.smorti@unifi.it
Objective:
1) To explore the psychological processes that develop in women and men during their first pregnancy obtained with assisted reproduction treatment; 2) to individuate the main plot that women and men use to recount their transition to parenthood.
Methods:
A face-to-face semi-structured autobiographical interview was administered. The interview was aimed to investigate the story of pregnancy. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed in order to merge principal themes.
Participants:
15 Italian couples waiting for the first child after a conception with assisted reproductive technologies.
Results:
Medically assisted pregnancy constitutes an extremely stressful, highly medicalised experience, that the couple, however, narrated according to a basic plot consisting in four phases: doubt, final sentence, victory, monitoring.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that physicians can benefit from knowing the phases that infertile couples experience during pregnancy because these can serve as a framework to use in monitoring their transition to parenthood and in planning psychological support and health interventions for them.
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