Infertility has a huge impact on your mental health because there is a whole host of emotions that can come with it; there’s the grief of not being able to conceive naturally, there are all sorts of different feelings of anger, anxiety, fear, stress and the the constant cycle of the woman that you find yourself on each month of feeling hopeful and then feeling despair when you aren’t pregnant, it’s kind of a constant ongoing rush of these different emotions that if you’re not able to understand how to process them, it can be a kind of downward spiral of despair. It is really important to give yourself the space to understand what your emotions mean, seek support, and find ways of coping. There are many things such as visualizations you can use to listen to, CBT is a great way of finding ways to process your thoughts. Finding different coping strategies to help you through this period of time is really key as all too often, because of how you’re feeling you put everything on hold and you’re not actually living your life, you are just waiting to get this positive pregnancy. Life can feel like it’s passing you by as you will be comparing yourself to all your peers, your family members and feeling like nothing is happening for you, so in order to ensure that whilst you are trying to conceive, you can continue living your life. You need to be really giving yourself the time to find things that give you joy, find things that can make you feel better and see support from people, whilst you’re doing it.
Infertility affects mental health as any bereavement does, generating discomfort. In the best of cases, when the treatments are successful at the first attempt, there is practically no affectation. It is true that when the years of searching or the number of failed attempts increase, we observe anxious and depressive symptoms in our patients. One of the most frequent situations is to make treatment the centre of life, generating a wheel of frustration and hope from which it is difficult to escape.
It is therefore important to receive adequate psychological counselling to prevent these states, as well as to treat them once they have set in.
Once the goal has been achieved and th
e baby arrives home, the vast majority of patients remember it as a bad thing that has passed.
Unfortunately, yes, infertility is a cause of depression and in my view, it’s probably vastly undiagnosed out there within the infertility community. We often see that the stats show that around 2-3 years into a fertility journey can be the peak of where we start to see depressive tendencies coming in. But it can happen at any stage, so it’s really important to be aware even by looking up this question. I hope that it is bringing some awareness to you. To bring further awareness there’s actually a standardized set of questions that you can go through online so if you Google depression quiz, depression questions, if you can go through those questions, that will give you some idea of where you are on that scale and whether you need to seek some support.
I would encourage you if you are checking out this question that you seek some support regardless because infertility can be incredibly damaging to a deep level. There is so much going on in your life with infertility, with the relationship strains, work difficulties, it really does encompass your whole life so it is so important to get the support that you need as you are going through it. And to know that there are so many different types of support out there, so going through your doctor is a key one to going to get the support that you need. There are also infertility coaches and counselors out there who are able to support you. Also, talking with your family and friends, if you’re able, can also open up new avenues of support outside of those. I encourage you to reach out even though it can be so hard when you’re in the middle of it but to reach out and try and get that support that you need.
