Factors influencing psychological health in infertile couples undergoing medical treatments: a multi-dimensional model

The study aims to propose and test a multi-dimensional infertility-related stress model including socio-demographic and fertility-related characteristics, infertility-related stress dimensions, coping strategies, and couple’s dyadic adjustment dimensions as predictors of anxiety and depression among partners of couples undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) treatments. Both members of 250 infertile couples filled out a questionnaire consisting of Socio-demographics (Age; Educational level; Employment status), Fertility-related characteristics (Type of diagnosis; Duration of infertility), Fertility Problem Inventory-Short Form (FPI-SF), Coping Orientations to Problem Experienced-New Italian Version (COPE-NIV), Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y (STAI-Y), and Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS). Findings from Hierarchical Multiple Linear Regressions indicated that the proposed predictive models were significant and had good levels of fit with the data, accounting for 63% of the variance in anxiety and for 54% of the variance in depression, among male partners, and for 41% of the variance in anxiety and for 47% of the variance in depression, among female partners. In both male and female partners, infertility-related stress dimensions predicted the greater amount of variance in anxiety (Male ΔR2 = .36, p < .001; Female ΔR2 = .23, p < .001), while coping strategies predicted the greater amount of variance in depression (Male ΔR2 = .24, p < .001; Female ΔR2 = .17, p < .001). Gender-specific risk and protective factors were also found. Results provided valid gender-sensitive predictive models to be adopted for the assessment of psychological health in infertile patients undergoing medical treatments and for the development of evidence-based and tailored counseling interventions at centers for assisted reproduction.