A Comparative Study of Alexithymia and Social Anxiety in Infertile Men and Women
Fatemeh Ghavi 1, Leili Mosalanejad2, Fariba Keshavarz 3, Masomeh Golestan Jahromi4, and Saeed Abdollahifrd5
1Midwifery Department, College of Nursing , Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz , Iran.
2Research Center for Social Determinants of Health, Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, Jahrom, Iran.
3Research committee, Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, Jahrom, Iran.
4Research and Clinical Center, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
5Research committee, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz , Iran.
Corresponding Author E-mail: Mosalanejad@jums.ac.ir
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2400
ABSTRACT: Alexithymia and social anxiety are psychological disorders that can accompany infertility. Alexithymia is the inability to process, analyze, and regulate one's emotion, and social anxiety is the extreme fear of being scorned in social and practical situations.The objective of this study is to compare alexithymia and social anxiety in infertile men and women who visited the Infertility Center of Yazd, Iran. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study of 198 infertile couples who visited the Infertility Center of Yazd, Iran. The subjects were chosen on a convenience sampling method basis. The measuring instruments consisted of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), a social anxiety inventory, and a demographics questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, and regression analysis. The results show that there is not a significant difference between the means alexithymia scores of the male and female groups. However, the overall level of alexithymia is higher in women than in men (59.50(11.88) versus 59.31(10.84), p=0.90). While men had a higher level of concrete thinking disorders, women had more problems with describing and expressing their emotions. The results also show that there is not a significant difference between the means of the two groups' scores in the subcategories of social anxiety. However, the men's mean score is higher in the subcategory of avoidance (6.87(3.96) vs 6.73(4.14)), and the women have higher scores in the other two subcategories of fear (7.90(4.44) vs 7.15(4.34)) and physiology (5.90(3.88) vs 5.52 (4.38). In view of the various psychological issues that can affect infertile men and women and subsequently lead to physical, emotional, and behavioral disorders, recognizing the problems of infertility can be helpful to health policy makers in developing effective educational programs
KEYWORDS: alexithymia; social anxiety; couples; infertility
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Copy the following to cite this article: Ghavi F, Mosalanejad L, Keshavarz F, Jahromi M. G, Abdollahifrd S. A Comparative Study of Alexithymia and Social Anxiety in Infertile Men and Women. Biosci Biotech Res Asia 2016;13(4). |
Copy the following to cite this URL: Ghavi F, Mosalanejad L, Keshavarz F, Jahromi M. G, Abdollahifrd S. A Comparative Study of Alexithymia and Social Anxiety in Infertile Men and Women. Biosci Biotech Res Asia 2016;13(4). Available from: https://www.biotech-asia.org/?p=16616 |