Is Infertility Causing You Depression?
Depression, anxiety and other psychological issues can be a serious problem for women suffering from infertility. In addition to the grief over not having the child you dream of, hormones, body image, and lack of support can wreak havoc on your psyche.
Alice Domar, who has done a great deal of research on the mind-body issues of infertility, found in one study that women with infertility were more likely to suffer from depression than many other groups. Women with infertility were found to be more depressed than even women with cancer. The only group in Domar’s study who had higher rates of depression were those suffering from chronic pain.
Major depressive disorder, the clinical name for severe or prolonged depression, is more common than most people realize. The symptoms as defined by the psychiatric reference book Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV), include depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure combined with at least four of the following: sleep disturbances, weight loss, changes in appetite, psychomotor agitation, feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt, impaired cognition or concentration and recurrent thoughts of death. Generally these symptoms must persist for two or more weeks to be diagnosed as clinical depression.
In addition to the depression issues stemming from infertility, the reason you are infertile can play a role in depression. Women suffering from PCOS (a common cause of infertility) are more likely to suffer from depression than women without the disorder, according to a study in the May 2003 issue of Journal of Affective Disorders (Rasgon N, et al.). The study showed that women with PCOS are depressed not only because of the symptoms but also because of the underlying biology of PCOS.
Numerous studies have shown that exercise is of great benefit in reducing the severity of depression. A brisk 30-minute walk or jog three times a week may be just as effective in relieving the symptoms of major depression as the standard anti-depressant medications, according to an article from the American Council on Exercise reporting the results of a study done at the Duke University Medical Center. Lead researcher James Blumenthal suggested that exercise may be beneficial because patients are actually taking an active role in trying to get better.
“Simply taking a pill is very passive,” he said. “Patients who exercised may have felt a greater sense of mastery over their condition and gained a greater sense of accomplishment. They felt more self-confident and had better self-esteem because they were able to do it themselves, and attributed their improvement to their ability to exercise.”
In addition, anti-depressants simply don’t work for some people. According to a 2000 New England Journal of Medicine study the medications fail to help one-third of people suffering from mild to moderate depression and half of those suffering from chronic depression.
Light therapy may help with seasonal depression, such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Sufferers of SAD find that they become depressed when the days are shorter, they are indoors for too much of the day, or when they are subject to long-periods of cloudy weather.
Clearly, if you are suffering from severe depression you won’t want to wait for relief and should seek out competent medical care as quickly as possible. But, if you are suffering from mild depression, or you are already under treatment, exercise is a good option with few negative side effects. Other successful treatments for depression include herbs, psychotherapy, prayer, and acupuncture.
