Perception of Women on the Psychosocial Effects of Infertility

Abstract

This aim of this study was to determine the knowledge of child bearing women on preventive measures of infertility in order to impact knowledge in area of deficiencies and to determine psychosocial effects of infertility on women. A descriptive non-experimental study was used and self-designed questionnaire was administered for data collection. Simple random technique was used to select 80 respondents. The majority of the respondents has a good knowledge on the causes and preventive measures of infertility, but still held to the misconceptions about the cause of infertility. Also, most of the respondents expressed feeling of low self-esteem as a result of infertility, this is corroborated by these findings: 57.5% of the respondents agreed that they certainly felt useless at times, 37.5% strongly agreed, 3.8% disagreed, while 1.2% of the respondents strongly disagreed. Majority of the respondents were socially isolated, this is corroborated by these findings: 11.2% of the respondents agreed that they do know what is happening with family and friends, 16.3% strongly agreed, 25% disagreed, while 47.5% of the respondents strongly disagreed. In conclusion, the study revealed sociocultural factors and lack of psychological support from the in-laws as the major factors influencing perception of psychosocial effects infertility among child bearing women.