Depression status of Japanese women who taking infertile treatment and associated factors

Abstract

Psychological health status of infertile women have been reported in many previous studies. However, how their sociodemographics, infertile and treatment status affect to their depression have not been revealed consistently. The purpose of this study was to clarify depression status of infertile women, and factors related to their depression.

Three hundreds of Japanese women undergoing infertile treatment were sent questionnaire. As independent variables, sociodemographics, factors related to infertile problem condition and treatment, stresses they have etc, were asked. As dependent variables, CES-D was measured.

Two hundreds and six patients answered the questionnaire. Average CES-D was 13.19±9.56, and percentage of over cut-off point was 31.5%. Multiple regression analysis showed that age, burden of sex life, burden of physical malfunction, attitude to disclose about their infertility, educational background were meaningfully associated to CES-D.

It showed that average CES-D score in this study was higher than that of ordinal women domestically and internationally. As factors related to depression, age, term of infertile treatment, cause of infertility were not related to CES-D, which is not similar to any other results of previous research. Therefore, in near future, more studies should be held with the same scales and statistical analysis as those used in this study.