Strategies for coping with stress and personal causality orientation in women undergoing infertility treatment

This master thesis deals with infertility and its treatment. Both in the theoretical and empirical part, it focuses on the female aspects of the issue. The theoretical part summarizes the knowledge which is important to understand the presented problems. We define the terms; we describe the psychological and physiological causes of infertility, the process of treatment of infertility and aspects thereof. We focus on the role of stress and the strategies of coping with stress related to infertility and its treatment; furthermore, we deal with personal causality orientation related to the experienced level of stress as one of the determinants of coping with stress. Our aim in the empirical part is to describe the use of strategies of coping with stress within the sample of women acquired by us, the distribution of personal causality orientation of these women and to capture the possible connections. The sample is made of 57 women who are currently undergoing a treatment for infertility. To collect the data, we used the SVF 78 Inventory, the DOPO Questionnaire of the Personal Causality Orientation and a self-developed anamnestic questionnaire. Based on acquired data, we established some specificity in the use of strategies of coping with stress and the distribution of personal causality orientation..