Effectiveness of Progressive Muscle Relaxation on Minimizing Stress among Women with Infertility

Abstract

Infertility harms women's relationship with family and friends, it is affected the relationship between the couple's sexual relationship and cause stress. Progressive muscle relaxation is considered one of the common methods used to minimize stress. So the study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation on minimizing stress among women with infertility. Subjects and method: A quasi-experimental research design with a pretest-posttest was utilized on a purposive sample of 70 women who randomly was divided into two groups, from a population of 386 women in six-months, from the beginning of September 2019 to the end of February 2020, who attended at the obstetric clinic at Bani-Suif University Hospital, Egypt. Two tools were utilized to collect data in this study: (1) a socio-demographic and fertility history structured interview schedule, (2) Newton's infertility stress questionnaire was used for data collection. After assessing and evaluating stress levels, the Progressive muscle relaxation technique was implemented in the intervention group. Results: t-test indicated that there were significant differences in stress scores between the two groups after the intervention (p compared to the intervention group. Conclusion: Progressive muscle relaxation technique was effective in minimizing the stress score among infertile women as alternative medicine method. Recommendations: Providing health education program to pregnant women progressive muscle relaxation technique that they can help in providing support.