The psychofortology of women undergoing infertility treatment at a privately managed health care unit

Abstract

Infertility, the inability to conceive a child or carry a pregnancy to birth, is an age-old concern, the anguish and disappointment of which is universal regardless of the etiology. Although technological advancement in the field of reproductive medicine has led to the possibilities of near miraculous procedures, infertility treatment offers the hope of conception without guaranteeing it and places the couple under tremendous emotional and financial strain. A moderate amount of research has explored the coping of individuals and the couple experiencing infertility, but has been primarily orientated to a clinical and medical focus as well as an exploration of the pathological symptoms that individuals may experience. This study has adopted a psychofortigenic focus and explored and described the coping (i.e., the coping resources and sense of coherence) and subjective well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life and happiness) of women undergoing infertility treatment. An exploratory descriptive research design was used and the participants were selected by means of non-probability purposive sampling. The sample consisted of 61women who were aged 30 years and older and required that they had received infertility treatment at a privately managed health care unit. Contextual and biographical data were gathered by means of a biographical questionnaire. Hammer and Marting’s (1988) Coping Resources Inventory was used to assess the participant’s coping resources. Antonovsky’s (1987) Orientation to Life Scale was used to measure the construct of Sense of Coherence. The Satisfaction with Life Scale by Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin (1985) was used to assess respondents’ overall satisfaction with life while Kamman and Flett’s (1983) Affectometer-2 (AFM-2) was used to measure participants’ subjective happiness. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and cluster analysis. The results of the CRI indicated a total coping resources score slightly below the mean of 50 as established by Hammer and Marting (1988). Results revealed that the highest mean score was obtained on the spiritual/philosophical subscale. Results from the SOC-29 indicated that the women sampled had an average Sense of Coherence. In terms of the construct of satisfaction with life as measured by the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the results indicated that the participants were slightly satisfied with their lives. Results from the AFM-2 revealed that the majority of participants experienced a below average feeling of happiness. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct clusters that differed significantly across the four measures