The Model of Predicting Psychological Distress According to Emotional Regulation with the Mediation Role of Adaptation to Infertility in the Infertile Women

Infertility is a major problem among many families, especially in Iranian families. The phenomenon of infertility, having the conditions of a critical event, ie duration, complex conditions, unpredictability, and uncontrollable conditions, creates a comprehensive crisis in the life of infertile couples and causes various injuries. Therefore, infertile women can be expected to suffer from various psychological and social problems. The psychological impact of infertility on the marital life of infertile women is often associated with family conflicts. Infertile women often consider infertility as the most stressful event of their lives and describe repeated and successive periods of treatment as periods of crisis and negative psychological responses such as anxiety, depression, lack of control, guilt, sexual problems, and lack of self-confidence. Shows that these negative emotions and stress caused by infertility can even lead to treatment discontinuation or affect treatment outcomes. According to this, the present study was conducted to offer a model of predicting psychological distress according to emotional regulation with the mediation role of adaptation to infertility in infertile women.

The research method was descriptive-correlational and pathway analysis.The statistical population of the present study included infertile women who were referred to the Royan Infertility Center in the city of Tehran in the summer of 2020. The statistical samples included 350 infertile women who were selected through a convenient sampling method. The applied questionnaires included the Psychological-Social Adaptation to Disease Scale (PSADS) (Drogits, 1986), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) (Garnefski, et.al, 2001), and Psychological Distress Questionnaire (Kessler, et.al, 2002). The data analysis was conducted via pathway analysis and Bootstrap test. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS and Amos 23 software.

The results showed that positive and negative emotional regulation and adaptation to infertility have a significant relationship with the psychological distress of infertile women (p<0.01). Moreover, positive and negative emotional regulation and adaptation to infertility have a direct significant effect on the psychological distress of infertile women (p<0.01). Moreover, the results of Bootstrap showed that the adaptation to infertility has a significant mediation role in the relationship of positive and negative emotional regulation with the psychological distress of infertile women (p<0.01). Finally, the model enjoyed an appropriate goodness of fit.

Considering the significant mediation role of adaptation to infertility clinical therapists must improve the infertile women’s psychological-social adaptation through applying efficient psychological therapy methods. Because adapting to infertility can bring psychological and emotional relief to infertile women. This process also allows infertile women to follow their treatment process without stress and anxiety.