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Resilience in infertile couples acts as a protective factor against infertility-specific distress and impaired quality of life

  • ASSISTED REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES
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Abstract

Objective

Our hypothesis was that resilience (=psychosocial stress-resistance) reduces infertility-specific distress and maintains quality of life of infertile couples.

Methods

Questionnaire data of WHO Quality of Life assessment (WHOQOL; domains: ‘physical’, ‘psychological’, ‘social relationships’ and ‘environment’), Fertility Problem Inventory (FPI; scales: ‘social concern’, ‘sexual concern’, ‘relationship concern’, ‘rejection of childfree lifestyle’ and ‘need for parenthood’), Resilience Scale (RS), as well as sociographic and medical data were available for 199 infertile couples.

Results

Age, medical diagnosis and ‘intensity of desire for a child’ had no influence on quality of life. High scores on ‘suffering from childlessness’ went along with less satisfaction on ‘physical’ and ‘psychological’ domains for the women only. For both partners, high scores on ‘suffering from childlessness’ went along with higher scores on all FPI scales. High resilience was associated with high scores on all WHOQOL domains for both partners, also with low scores on all FPI scales except for ‘need for parenthood’ for the women and with a low score only on ’relationship concern’ for the men.

Conclusions

For infertile couples, resilience can be considered as an unspecific protective factor against infertility-specific distress and impaired quality of life. When offering counselling to involuntarily childless couples, awareness should be raised for resilience as a couple’s resource and a “generic” factor of coping.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Christopher R. Newton for his support and for the authorisation of the German version of the FPI.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Medical Psychology, Centre for Psychosocial Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Bergheimer Straße 20, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany

    Darja Herrmann, Horst Scherg, Rolf Verres & Tewes Wischmann

  2. Department of Gynaecological Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine, Women’s Hospital, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Cornelia von Hagens & Thomas Strowitzki

Authors
  1. Darja Herrmann
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  2. Horst Scherg
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  3. Rolf Verres
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  4. Cornelia von Hagens
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  5. Thomas Strowitzki
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  6. Tewes Wischmann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tewes Wischmann.

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Capsule Resilience acts as a protective factor against infertility-specific distress and impaired quality of life for infertile couples

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Herrmann, D., Scherg, H., Verres, R. et al. Resilience in infertile couples acts as a protective factor against infertility-specific distress and impaired quality of life. J Assist Reprod Genet 28, 1111–1117 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-011-9637-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-011-9637-2

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