Emotional Burden Of Infertility: A Controlled Study Of Women Managed At A Nigerian Teaching Hospital

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between socio-cultural factors and infertility-related stress among a sample of Nigerian women. The subscales of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and a schedule detailing socio-demographic and infertility-related variables were administered on women with infertility and a matched control group. The rates of significant anxiety symptoms (39.4%) and depressive symptoms (40.4%) among the women with infertility were higher than the corresponding rates of 11.1% and 10.1% in the control group. Their mean anxiety and depression scores were also higher (