Infertility and psychiatric morbidity

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.