Abstract

A study on Psychological wellbeing and quality of life of women undergoing in vitro fertilization: correlates and intervention was conducted under the aegis of University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad during 2022-24 on 284 women (142 women undergoing IVF and a matched sample of 142 women with natural pregnancy) from Karnataka and Telangana states. Among 142 of each study group 74 from Telangana and 68 from Karnataka recruited for the study. Data was collected from maternity hospitals, IVF clinics and IVF referee person after receiving consent from participants. Snowball and purposive sampling technique were used to select the sample. The objective of the study was to assess psychological wellbeing and quality of life of women undergoing IVF, study the influence of covariates and examine the impact of intervention. A QUAN-qual mixed research method was employed. A self-structured questionnaire was used to collect general information of participants, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) by Lovibond and Lovibond (1995), Fertility quality of life (FertiQoL) questionnaire by Boivin et al. (2008), Life style and health habit behavior questionnaire by Domar et al. (2012), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) by Buysse et al. (1989), Couple satisfaction index (CSI) by Funck and Rogge (2007), Multidimensional scale of perceived social support (MSPSS) by Zimet et al. (1988) and Socio-Economic Status (SES) Scale by Aggarwal et al. (2005) were the tools used for the study. An intervention package was developed to enhance the psychological wellbeing of women undergoing IVF.
The results revealed that female related factors mainly ovulatory diseases were the major causes (58.45%) of infertility. Age of the respondent and partner age (35-45 years), age at marriage, irregular menstruation, late puberty with abnormal bleeding, poor sleep quality, fair marital satisfaction, caffeine intake and poor consumption of fruits and vegetables had the higher odds of risk for infertility. A large number of women with IVF had extremely severe depression (49.29%), moderate anxiety (41.54%) and stress (42.25%). Majority of IVF women had moderate (68.30%) to high (31.69%) fertility quality of life.
Age of couple (i.e., 35-39 and 40-45 years), late marriage, consanguineous marriage, rural locality, poor SES, obesity, type of infertility, previous IVF attempts and marital satisfaction were significantly associated and predicted psychological wellbeing (i.e., depression, anxiety and stress) of women undergoing IVF. Higher education, medium social support, rural locality, women married at 30-34 years, women aged 35-39 years, family size, fair marital satisfaction, socio-economic status, spouse aged 40-45 years and poor BMI were the significantly correlated and predicted the total fertility quality of life of women undergoing IVF.
Based on results of the study, an educational package on enhancing psychological wellbeing was developed and implemented. To know the efficacy of the package it was tested on 60 women (30 were in intervention and 30 were in control group) undergoing IVF. Post intervention results revealed the decrease in mean depression (24.58 to 17.32), anxiety (14.11 to 9.26) and stress (18.10 to 13.86) scores. Hence, the intervention program proved to be effective in enhancing psychological wellbeing of women undergoing IVF.