Experience of mental health in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: a descriptive phenomenological study

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the experiences, emotional coping strategies, and help-seeking needs of women with PCOS from their perspective, considering common psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression that are prevalent among individuals with PCOS. Materials and Methods: The study recruited 14 women with PCOS for semi-structured interviews between October and November 2022, using a descriptive phenomenology method design. The interviews were analyzed using NVivo 12 software. Results: Four themes and eleven subthemes were derived from the semi-structured interviews: (1) Negative Mental Health Status; (2) Four Patterns of Emotion Regulation; (3) The Psychological Double-Edged Sword: Family Social Network; (4) Strong Demands for Psychological Counseling and Lifestyle Guidance. Conclusion: The study suggests that interventions should focus on fostering internalized self-efficacy and emotional expression, promoting constructive familial support, and providing psychological counseling and lifestyle recommendations to alleviate psychological distress experienced by women with PCOS.

Keywords:

• Polycystic ovary syndrome
• mental health
• emotional expression
• social support
• descriptive phenomenological study

Acknowledgments

The authors frankly thank all participants involved in the interview and other staff members on the scene.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Raw qualitative data cannot be shared due to ethical restrictions; however, anonymized transcripts, interview schemes, and coding decisions are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by funding from the Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate under Grant number: CX20220333, as well as the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University under Grant number: 2022ZZTS0251.