Prevalence and associated factors of depression among the women with infertility attending fertility clinic, Kathmandu Nepal.

Research Report.

ABSTRACT: There is great desire for having children in order to maintain family roots and values and obtain future support from their offspring. Infertility has the psychosocial problem among married couples. Treating and managing infertility is very complex and challenging job for health worker because infertility is highly related with social isolation and discrimination. Many research have provided evidence that depression is mainly prevalent among infertile women. It has been reported that depressive symptoms could be the cause of infertility, its consequence, or but still neglected area of health care delivery system. Descriptive cross sectional study was conducted to find out the prevalence and associated factors of depression among the women with infertility problem. Total of 160 women were interviewed through semi-structured interview schedule for socio-demographic information and factors associated and self-administered questionnaire also used to find out the prevalence of depression through Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Collected data was entered in Epi, data 3.1 and was exported into IBM SPSS 20 version. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to test the association between the variables. Out of 182 respondents, 43.3% respondents were belonged to age group 31-35. Mean age was 31.36±3.82. Regarding education status 100% respondents were literate and 57.1% were service holder. The prevalence of depression among women with infertility was 38%. Statistical analysis (chi-square) showed that numerous factors such as ethnicity (p=0.00), education level of husband (p=0.01), occupation of husband (p=0.00), fertility problem (in year) (p=0.00), chronic disease of respondent (p=0.01), history of abortion (p=0.005), type of family (p=0.04), emotional support by husband (p=0.00), rigid treatment regimen/ schedule (p=0,003) were significantly associated with depression among women with infertility In conclusion, prevalence of depression among women with infertility is nearly 40%, among them more than 10% had moderate to severe depression which is quite alarming. The findings of this study could be used by counselors and medical staff dealing with infertility patients to deal with issues and worries patients bring with themselves and to find ways of tackling them. Necessity of specific psychological interventions for couples struggling with infertility and help them manage potential mental health problems and meet their reproductive goals.