Psychological distress among men suffering from couple infertility.

[mensfe_admin]

Silke Dyer,  Carl Lombard,  and  Van der Spuy

Background;
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the impact of infertility on reproductive health in developing countries. Most of the reseach which has addressed the psychosocial consequences of infertility in African countries has bee qualitative in nature and focused on women. It was the aim of this study to assess psychological distress quantitatively in men suffering from couple infertility living in an urban community in South Africa.

Method:
The Synptom checklist -90-R, a standardized instrument for the measurement of current psychological symptom status, was administered to 120 men upon first presentation to a public health sector infertility clinic (study group) in a tertialry referal centre.
The control group comprised 120 men who attended an antenatal clinic with his partner. All men may have had previously fathered a child. Raw test scores were converted into standard areas T scores and analyzed further.

Results:
Participants inthe study group differed in their psychological symptom status when compared with controls. Male partners on infertile couples had significantly elevated T scores for all nine primary symptom dimentions as well as the global markers of distress (P<0.0001 versus control), but these did not exceed the upper range of normal.

Conclusion:
When compared with controls, male partners of infertile couples experienced elevated levels of psychological distress.
Understanding and addressing the male perspective on infertility is an important component of infertility management.

[robbyb]

Very interesting.  I can believe all of it.  I think men are at risk of ignoring (or even being clean unaware of) their own health in order to support partners.  We internalise our own stress, absorb other people's stress and are prepared to sacrifice the things we would normally do to de-stress.

We are idiots!