Effect of Existential Group Therapy on Infertility Stress in Infertile Men’s Spouses

Infertility creates a crisis in people’s lives, resulting in many psychological consequences. One of these consequences is infertility stress. Infertile men’s spouses are as stressed as infertile women in many areas.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of existential group therapy on infertility stress in infertile men’s spouses.

This clinical trial was conducted on 91 women whose husbands were infertile and living in Shahrood City, Iran, from August 2021 to March 2022. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups (48 in the intervention and 48 in the control group). A random sampling method was used to select samples, and a random block of size 4 was used for allocation. Eight existential group therapy sessions were conducted for the intervention group. All participants completed the demographic information questionnaire and infertility stress questionnaire before and after the intervention. The obtained data were analyzed using the paired and independent t-tests.

The mean±SD ages of the participants were 31.46±5.80 and 31.89±4.53 years in the intervention and control groups, respectively. Duration of infertility in the intervention and control groups were 5 and 4 years, respectively. Results showed significant differences between the mean±SD of the social concern subscale of the intervention group (28.35±10.36) and that of the control group (38.39±9.44), between the sexual concern subscale of the intervention group (28.68±8.72) compared to that of the control group (35.88±9.03), between communication concern subscale of the intervention group (29.28±12.18) compared to that of the control group (41.86±10.34), between lifestyle without children subscale of the intervention group (31.06±8.78) compared to that of the control group (37.13±8.78), and between need to be a parent subscale of the intervention group (37.55±9.22) compared to that of the control group (47.43±10.34) at the post-test (P=0.001). Results showed a significantly lower infertility stress total score for the intervention group (154.95±25.94) compared to the control group (190.02±25.91) at the post-test (P=0.001).

Existential group therapy counseling may be a useful approach to reduce the stress of infertility among couples who struggle with infertility.