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Psychological Distress and Coping Mechanisms in Infertile Couples



Norbert Pásztor1, *, Borbála Eszter Hegyi1, Edina Dombi1, Gábor Németh1
1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary


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Creative Commons License
© 2019 Pásztor et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Szeged, H-6725 Szeged, Semmelweis str 1, Hungary;
Tel: +36704530892; E-mail: norbert.pasztor@gmail.com


Abstract

Numerous motivational and strong emotional intentions can be found in the background of the desire for a child. Hence unintended childlessness gives rise to a severe psychological burden to both members of the couple. In the literature, several studies are involved in the exploration of this subject, albeit most of them bring into focus the differences of psychological liabilities between the genders. A smaller proportion of these papers examined the psychological aspects affecting couples, and just a very small number of studies investigated the psychological aspects in men. Nevertheless, most of the studies proved that although the psychological aspects in women can be more significant compared to their partner, the psychological burden of infertile men are obviously above the population average. Several different, gender-specific coping-mechanisms have been identified, which tend to be less successful in men compared to women. The acquirement of proper coping mechanisms could be more emphasized during the psychotherapeutic part of reproductive treatment.

Keywords: Infertility, Depression, Coping, Anxiety, Supportive psychotheraphy, Psychological distress.