Vol. 10, Issue 3, Part B (2024)

Background: Infertility is a worldwide health issue, which affects several people of reproductive age. Infertility is a life crisis with a wide range of socio-cultural, emotional, physical, and financial problems. Infertility and its treatment can affect all aspects of people’s lives, which can lead to various emotional or psychological consequences including frustration, depression, anxiety, turmoil, hopelessness, guilt, and feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness in life.

Aim and Objective: The present study aims to assess the effect of infertility on the quality of life among infertile women attending infertility clinics in Himachal Pradesh, India.

Material and Methods: Quantitative research approach was used in this study to explore Quality of Life (QoL) among infertile women. The research was conducted in the infertility clinic of Solan in Himachal Pradesh, India. The total sample size was 240 as per the Sample Size calculation. FertiQoL Questionnaire was the tool used for data collection. The association was compared using Crunchbase alpha, t-test, and ANOVA test with the selected demographic and clinical variables calculated by Chi-square test. The level of significance for the study chosen was (p<0.5 levels).

Results: The mean score of Total FertiQoL, Core FertiQoL and Treatment FertiQoL were 60.54±16.64 and 59.67±18.77, and 62.60±15.74 respectively. Cronbach’s α coefficients of all the FertiQoL scale and subscales were more than 0.9, indicating acceptable good internal consistency and hence all scales were included in the study. The lowest FERTIQOL score was found in the Emotional subscale. Women who had secondary infertility had poorer Mind / Body FertiQoL subscale scores. There was no statistically significant difference seen in the FertiQoL scores across all the age groups, levels of education and socio-economic status.

Conclusion: We can conclude based on this study that infertility does affect the quality of life especially mind / body or mental health of these women on the basis of the socio-demographics. Infertility affects the emotional quality of life of these women significantly, but this is independent of their age, education, socio-economic status or years of infertility.