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Infertility associated with higher risk of hospitalization for psychiatric disorders
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Women who remained childless after their first investigation for infertility had more hospitalizations for psychiatric disorders than women who had at least one child after their investigation, according to study results presented at the 2012 European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology Annual Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.
“The results suggest that a failure to succeed after presenting for fertility investigation may be an important risk modifier for psychiatric disorders,” study researcher Birgitte Baldur-Felskov, MD, an epidemiologist from the Danish Cancer Research Center in Copenhagen, said in a press release. “This adds an important component to the counseling of women being investigated and treated for infertility. Specialists and other health care personnel working with infertile patients should also be sensitive to the potential for psychiatric disorders among this patient group.”
Baldur-Felskov and colleagues conducted a nationwide follow-up of 98,737 Danish women investigated for infertility between 1973 and 2008. The women were cross-linked through Denmark’s population-based registries to the Danish Psychiatric Central Registry, which provided information on hospitalizations for psychiatric disorders, including alcohol and intoxicant abuse, schizophrenia and psychoses, affective disorders, including depression, anxiety adjustment and obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders and other mental disorders.
The women were followed from the date of their initial fertility investigation until the date of psychiatric event, emigration, death, hospitalization or Dec. 31, 2008, whichever came first.
According to the study abstract, women who remained childless after their initial fertility investigation had a significantly higher risk (18%) of hospitalizations for all mental disorders vs. women who had a baby. The risk was also greater for alcohol and substance abuse (103%), schizophrenia (47%) and other mental disorders (43%). The most common discharge diagnoses in the cohort — anxiety, adjustment and obsessive-compulsive disorders — were not affected by fertility status.
During an average follow-up time of 12.6 years, 54% of women in the cohort had a baby. Approximately 5,000 women were hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder, most commonly for “anxiety, adjustment and obsessive-compulsive disorders” followed by “affective disorders, including depression.”
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