Levels of anxiety sensitivity, somatosensory amplification and alexithymia in patients with unexplained infertility

Abstract

Objective In this study, we aimed to focus on the psychological aspect of unexplained infertility by comparing their psychological features to those of infertile patients with a known causes and fertile patients. Patients and methods Sixty unexplained infertility patients, 50 infertile patients with a known cause and 56 fertile patients were included in the study. Patients were evaluated using socio-demographic data form, Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Somatosensory Amplification Scale (SAS) and Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI-3). Results No significant differences in the levels of alexithymia, somatosensory amplification and anxiety sensitivity were detected between the groups (P > .05). When the correlation of clinical scale scores with each other was analysed in the whole group of infertile patients regardless of the cause, a weak positive correlation was found between anxiety sensitivity and difficulty in identifying feelings. Conclusion In our study, it has been found out that; regardless of the knowledge of the aetiology of infertility, the levels of alexithymia, somatosensory amplification and anxiety sensitivity of infertile cases did not differ from those of fertile women. However, it has been shown that as the difficulty in identifying emotions increases in infertile cases, anxiety sensitivity, which may cause psychological infertility, also increases.