Source
Department of Neuroscience, Psychiatry Division, University of Siena School of Medicine, Siena, Tuscany, Italy.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To assess the relationship between psychiatric disorders and infertility.
DESIGN:
Case-control study.
SETTING:
Fertile and infertile volunteer couples in an academic research setting.
PATIENT(S):
Eighty-one infertile couples recruited from an infertility center before fertility treatment and 70 fertile controls recruited from an obstetrics and gynecology clinic.
INTERVENTION(S):
None.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S):
The presence of Axis 1 psychiatric disorders.
RESULT(S):
The occurrence of current psychiatric disorders was significantly higher among infertile subjects than among fertile controls, especially for adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood (16% vs. 2%) and for binge eating disorder (8% vs. 0).
CONCLUSION(S):
Our data highlight that a percentage of infertile patients have already developed a psychiatric disorder at the time of their first contact with a specialized fertility service. Possible applications are discussed, including the recommendation that gynecologists screen for clinical or subclinical psychiatric disorders in infertility patients and offer treatment accordingly.