An analysis of the correlation between marital adjustment test and self-esteem and depression in Chinese infertile women

Abstract

To investigate the status of marital adjustment test and self-esteem and depression in the Chinese infertile women and to explore the mediating effect of self-esteem on the relationship between marital adjustment test and depression. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 244 Chinese infertile women from February 2019 to April 2019 in our reproductive center. All included women had voluntarily participated in this self-evaluation and the informed consents were obtained from all participants. This study was conducted at the Reproductive and Genetic Hospital of CITIC-Xiangya (Changsha, China). The 244 Chinese infertile women who had completed 4 questionnaires were recruited by simple random sampling. The questionnaires included (a)General information (made by the author), (b) Locke-Wallace marital adjustment Test(MAT), (c) Self-Esteem Scale (SES) and (d) Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Pearson's correlation was used to investigate the relationship. Structural equation model (SEM) was constructed by AMOS 22.0. The mean scores of these Chinese infertile women were 101.42 ± 20.76, 28.24 ± 4.96 and 17.82 ± 10.47 based on MAT, SES and CES-D, respectively. The total mean score of CES-D was found to have a significant negative correlation with the score of SES (r=-0.609, p＜0.01) and MAT (r=-0.548, p＜0.01). While the total mean score of MAT was found to have a significant positive correlation with the score of SES (r=0.441, p＜0.01).SEM indicated that marital adjustment test had significant direct effects on self-esteem (β= 0.44，P＜0.01) and depression (β= -0.35，P＜0.01); self-esteem had a significant direct effect on marital adjustment test (β= -0.46，P＜0.01)．Furthermore, self-esteem partial mediated the relationship between marital adjustment test and depression. The depression level of infertile women was higher, and was negatively correlated with marital adjustment test and self-esteem. The mediating role of self-esteem may provide a potential mechanism for exploring the relationship between marital adjustment test and depression. These results suggested that medical staff should pay attention to the patients’ depression, especially to the infertile women with marital disorders and low level of self-esteem. And then, humanistic care which helps the patients to vent their inner depression in a variety of ways could be implemented during treatment. In addition, we should actively carry out health education for infertile women and their families, so that they could have an enhanced understanding of reproductive knowledge, and gradually improved psychosociality and coping ability to deal with various problems arising in the course of treatment.