Women infertility and common mental disorders: A cross-sectional study from North India

Infertility is a very distressing condition. It is often associated with long-term stress, which can emerge as anxiety and depression.

To understand the effect of socio-demographic variables, reproductive trajectories, and lifestyle variables on stress, depression, and anxiety independently and to understand the relationship of psychological variables with each other among infertile and fertile women.

This cross-sectional study recruited 500 women which included 250 primary infertile cases and 250 age-matched fertile controls of the age group 22-35 years. A pretested modified interview schedule was administered which included demographic variables, lifestyle variables, and reproductive trajectories. In addition, psychological tools like PSS, GAD-7, and PHQ-9 were used to collect the data pertaining to Stress, anxiety, and depression, respectively. Data analysis was performed with the statistical software version SPSS, IBM version 24.

Infertile women are more prone to various psychological disorder (stress, anxiety and depression). None of the demographic and lifestyle variables were associated with stress, anxiety, and depression among infertile women. Only reproductive trajectories were found to be causing stress, anxiety, and depression respectively among infertile women. In addition, stress is leading to both anxiety and depression among infertile women but only to depression in fertile women.

Infertile women should be counselled by medical experts regarding reproductive trajectories. Infertile couples should be guided and counselled to incorporate mental health screening and treatment in their routine check-up.