Psychological costs of life crisis in Polish women treated for infertility

Abstract

AimThe aim of the study was to understand and analyse psychological costs of a life crisis in women treated for infertility.BackgroundInfertility constitutes a hardship that may be treated as a crisis situation for the women experiencing it.MethodsThe study has been conducted using mixed methodology. It encompassed hermeneutic approach for the analysis of narration, supplemented with a projective technique, as well as qualitative methods: original Inventory of Psychological Costs in Infertility and Scale of Attitudes towards Bio-Ethical Problems in Infertility, Basic Hope Inventory.ResultsThe hermeneutic analysis identified 18 types of psychological costs, which were later confirmed during quantitative analyses. Statistically significant relationships were found between psychological costs and basic hope (r = –0.369; p < 0.01), length of treatment (the longer the infertility treatment, the higher psychological costs) and methods of treating infertility (the more advanced the method, the higher psychological costs). In the hermeneutic analyses, lability of hope as an emotional state was identified as the most important of all psychological costs – decrease of hope as an emotional states leads to more intense experiencing of the other costs (statistically proven).ConclusionIdentification of psychological costs allows for multidimensional perception of infertility treatment as a crisis situation, thus providing opportunities to offer better psychological help for patients seeking remedy for their condition. What is also important is the role of hope treated both as an emotional state, and as a trait: basic hope.