Researchers from the School Of Psychology at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom say that women who are unable to cope with unsuccessful with fertility treatments may develop mental health issues as a possible long-term effect of the failed attempts at conceiving a child.
Lead researcher, Dr. Sophia Gameiro, said that they conducted their study by observing a group of women undergoing fertility sessions, and assessing the factors that affect their mental health over a specific period of time after unsuccessful fertility treatments. According to Dr. Gameiro, "It was already known that people have infertility treatment and remain childless have worse mental health then those who do manage to conceive with treatment." However, she added that there is no previous research that looks into why this happens.
Based on the questionnaire that was distributed to more than 7,000 women who underwent fertility treatments between the years 1995 and 2000, the majority of women who had failed fertility treatments had accepted the outcome, however, there is a minority 6% who said that they still wanted to have children. This group corresponded to the worst cases of mental-health associated to failed fertility treatments. Dr. Gameiro said that these types of subjects are the ones who are 2.8 times more likely to develop mental health issues in the long run. Their findings also revealed that women were more accepting of the fact that they cannot conceive children through fertility treatments when the problem is attributed to the man. Women who started treatments at an older age also turned out to have better mental health compared to those who received treatment younger.
One of the major factors affecting the mental health outcome is whether or not the women already had children prior to receiving the treatments, "The strengths of this association varied according to whether women had children or not. For women with no children, those with a child-wish were more likely to have worse mental-health than women without a child-wish."