Carreño MJ, Morales CF, Aldana CE, Flores MA

Language: Spanish
References: 17
Page: 14-21
PDF size: 256.99 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Objective: Sterility usually develops emotional alterations, which vary from moderate emotional changes to intense depression and anxiety reactions. This symptomatology may have its origin when the sterile woman has applied the strategies to case these symptoms, and they have not worked. The female sterility time of evolution is a variable not often taken into account, starting with the assumption that symptomatology is the moment of sterility detection, and when the patient is informed about her disability to get pregnant. This study has the objective of detecting the emotional changes that the patient with sterility suffers through different stages of their illness.
Material and methods: Subjects were 158 women who attend to the assisted reproduction clinic of Instituto Nacional de Perinatología. Their ages varied from 25 to 40 years. The sample was divided in 3 groups, in different evolution stages: short term (2-4 years), medium term (5-7 years) and long term (8 years or more). The Minnesota Multyphasic of Personality Inventory (MMPI) was administered to all patients in order to measure their depression and anxiety levels.
Results: Kruskall-Wallis non parametric analysis test was applied. The results showed significant statistical differences in the 2 D (depression), 7 Pt (psychasthenia), and 8 Es (schizophrenia) scales between the 3 groups.
Conclusions: It is true that depression does not have a linear behavior. We can observe that the short term group presents a high level (above the reference point), but the long term group shows an even higher rating. This shows that adjusting time for sterility is found between 2 and 4 years in order to retake the disadjustment from the 5th year on which it is likely to become a chronic depression in the sterile woman. Variables such as a low scholarity level, knowing or not the sterility cause, and working or not in home are conditioning factors in the anxiety symptomatology manifestation, and not the sterility period of evolution.

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