THE EFFECT OF INFERTILITY COUNSELING WITH COUPLE THERAPY APPROACH ON THE EMOTIONAL LEVEL OF INFERTILE COUPLES (RCT)

Infertility is a biological, psychological, and social disorder, and it deeply affects the various aspects of infertile couple’s life. This study aimed to investigate the effect of infertility counseling on promoting the emotional level of infertile couples.

This randomized controlled clinical trial was done by applying available sampling method. Research questionnaire consisted of demographic characteristics and SCREENIVF for investigating the emotional level of infertile couples. Samples were selected from the infertile couples referred to the governmental infertility center to undergo treatment. The study sample size consisted of 30 couples in the intervention and control groups. Firstly, they were asked to answer the questionnaires as pre-test. Then, group counseling sessions were conducted for couples in the intervention group in 6 sessions/45 minutes. At the end of the last session, two groups filled out questionnaires as post-test. Data were analyzed by SPSS 19. Parametric paired T-test was applied to compare the emotional level of couples, and independent T- Test was run to compare the emotional level of couples in two groups.

The two groups were homogeneous in terms of demographic characteristics. The comparison between the emotional level mean in both groups showed that infertility counseling had no effect on their emotional level (p=0.41).

The results indicated that in order to increase the emotional level of infertile couples, it is better to test other counseling approaches with more sessions.