Abstract
Background: About 40,000 infertile couples visit Tu Du Hospital, Vietnam for consultation and treatment of infertility per year. Depression in infertile female patients not only influences mental wellbeing, but also affects the effectiveness of infertility treatment. The study aimed to determine the depression prevalence in infertile female patients and associated factors.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted during April–July 2016 with 401 infertile women visiting the Department of Infertility at Tu Du Hospital . The PHQ-9 scale was used to measure depressive symptoms. Face-to-face interviewing was conducted using a structured questionaire. Participants were also inquired about demographic characteristics, socio-economic status, infertility related characteristics and family and social relationships.
Results: The depression prevalence was 12.2%, with a cut-off score ≥10 on PHQ-9 scale. Depression in infertile female patients was associated with infertility caused by the husband (AOR=3.09, 95% CI=1.44–6.63), infertility caused by both spouses (AOR=3.63, 95% CI=1.26–10.48), alcohol-addicted husband (AOR=4.83, 95% CI=1.32–17.58), and with wife’s previous antidepressant use (AOR=48.1, 95% CI=4.83–47.96)
Conclusions: Assessment of depressive symptoms should be assessed at an early stage among infertile female patients for timely mental health support.
Keywords:
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to the participants for making this research possible and to all physicians and staff of Tu Du Hospital, Department of Infertility. The research was funded by Tu Du Hospital, Vietnam. The funding organization did not have any role in the design, data collection, or interpretation of the findings in the manuscript.
Availability of data
Data are available upon request to the corresponding author.
Supplementary material
Demographic variables were defined and collected, including:
(1) Study subject’s and husband’s age was calculated as year of study minus year of birth.
(2) Marital status was a binary variable with two values of single or cohabiting. Single was women who had ever been married and diagnosed as having infertility, but then divorced and lived alone. They visited the hospital with the desire for infertility treatment.
(3) Economic status was a nominal variable, with ordinal values of just enough for living or relatively wealthy that were defined on subjective assessment.
(4) Anxiety of family had two values of YES (when the answer included one of the following factors: child loss, relative loss, family pressure on child) or NO (when those factors did not exist).
(5) Alcohol abuse was based on the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10, alcohol abuse was diagnosed when three of the following criteria existed within at least one recent year:
– vigorous desire that was unable to stop and forced to go on.
–alcohol intake decrease or termination was very difficult.
–evidence of increased alcohol tolerance, like increased volume consumption.
– gradually ignoring hobbies which had been preferred before.
– continuation of alcohol intake, despite harm being known.
(6) Tobacco abuse, as per American Psychological Association (APA), a tobacco smoker who has at least three of the following criteria for a minimal period of 12 months is tobacco-addicted (in line with DSM-V):Citation1
– number of cigarettes increases day by day.
– upon tobacco shortage or abstinence, smokers feel restless, upset, depressed, angry, have problems concentrating, etc. Those discomforts disappear upon smoking resumption.
– smoking time longer than expected. For instance, a smoker intends to smoke for a working duration or during stress in life and plans to stop smoking after things are solved, but continues to smoke anyway, or plans to smoke outdoors only, not in front of children, but while at home, sometimes desires to break the plan.
– wants or tries to stop smoking many times, but fails.
– finds plenty of time to use tobacco and smoke.
–reduces or gives up social activities due to tobacco.
– continues to smoke, although harmful impacts are already known or is already suffering from smoking-related problems.
References
- American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders. 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 2013.
Author contributions
All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; took part in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.