Exploring Mental Health Self-Care in Infertile Women: A Qualitative Study in Iran

Background & aim: Infertility has various psychological consequences. Although previous studies paid attention to the psychological effects of infertility and suggested many interventions for infertile patients’ mental health promotion, the design of self-care interventions and the concept and dimensions of mental health self-care have received less attention. This study was conducted to explore the concept and dimensions of mental health self-care in infertile women.Methods: This study was conducted from November ۲۰۲۱ to February ۲۰۲۲ using the conventional content analysis approach Purposive sampling was performed and continued until reaching data saturation. Semi-structured and in-depth interviews were conducted with ۱۹ participants at the Infertility and Reproductive Health Research Center of Babol. The Graneheim and Lundman method (۲۰۰۴) was utilized to analyze the data in MAXQDA version ۱۰ software.Results: One theme and three categories emerged from data analysis. The emerging theme of “involving in stress coping strategies” consisted of three categories of ۱) emotion-focused stress coping skills, ۲) treatment and healthcare-seeking behaviours and ۳) mental symptoms self-management. The findings revealed that mental health self-care is a set of behaviors adopted by infertile women to prevent the effects of infertility on their mental health and includes strategies such as emotion-focused stress coping skills, treatment seeking, and self-management of mental symptoms.Conclusion: Infertile women adopt different strategies to deal with mental pressures of infertility. The results that emerged can be applied to the development of interventions that aim to promote mental health self-care behaviors.

کلیدواژه ها:

Mental health ، Infertility ، Women ، Self-care