Mindfulness for Fertility
- Mindfulness based interventions, once a week, between 8 to 12 weeks can have a positive impact on experiences of infertility.
- It promotes self-compassion, adaptive emotion regulation and infertility-related coping strategies, which, in turn, may influence quality of life and pregnancy rates.
Emotional adjustment in couples with infertility is complex as couples have to deal with:
- Stress of infertility diagnosis.
- Infertility associated identity crisis.
- Dealing with the ongoing infertility treatment.
- High possibility of unsuccessful treatment cycles.
- Choosing treatment options.
- Uncertainty of outcomes of consecutive cycles (nonresponse, abandonment, failure).
- Unwanted effects (repeated cycles of treatments, multiple gestations, high rates of miscarriages, limited live birth rates, and other obstetric risks).
There is evidence that Mindfulness-Based Interventions can have a positive impact on people’s experiences of infertility. These consist of one session per week and duration may range from 8 to 12 weeks. In this programme, you have access to several mindfulness recordings for different stages of the journey.
Research on mindfulness and fertility
- By the end of the intervention, women revealed a significant increase in mindfulness, self-compassion, meaning-based coping strategies.
- Inversely, they presented a significant decrease in emotion regulation difficulties, active- and passive-avoidance coping strategies.
- There were statistically significant differences between participants in the pregnancy rates: at six months post-intervention, mindfulness participants were significantly more likely to have become pregnant (45%) than were controls (26%).
- Improves infertility‐related QoL, enhances awareness, increases acceptance and regained control over life.
- Improves the psychological well-being of infertile women, including their self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth.
- Women who attended the program revealed a significant decrease in depressive symptoms, internal and external shame, entrapment, and defeat. Inversely, they presented statistically significant improvement in mindfulness skills and self-efficacy to deal with infertility.
- MBIs led to reduction in emotional distress, pain perception, depression, and anxiety after 3–6 months of continued practice.
- Women in the intervention group had significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and stress and were 4.5 times more likely to become pregnant than those in the control group.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287508275_Effects_of_a_mindfulness-based_intervention_on_fertility_quality_of_life_and_pregnancy_rates_among_women_subjected_to_first_in_vitro_fertilization_treatment
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nop2.232
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110569018301031
[4] https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(13)00646-8/fulltext[5]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243965304_Mindfulness-Based_Program_for_Infertility_Efficacy_study
[5] http://www.jhrsonline.org/article.asp?issn=0974-1208;year=2020;volume=13;issue=1;spage=3;epage=21;aulast=Patel
[6] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229379