Intrusive and avoidant ideation among females pursuing infertility treatment

It was shown that infertility and its treatment constitute a stressful expe rience for women, reflected particularly in disturbing intrusive ideation a bout the stress source. Infertility patients reported levels of intrusive i deation significantly higher than routine gynecologic patients and not sign ificantly different from levels of psychiatric outpatients being treated fa r stress reactions to traumatic events. Intrusive ideation also predicted t he degree of self-reported infertility-specific distress and dysfunction, f urther clarifying the key role of such ideation in the experience. Finally, as hypothesized, the frustration level of the treatment experience (as ind exed by the number of infertility treatment methods attempted) predicted av oidant ideation. Implications for managing the psychological distress and d isruption associated with the infertility treatment experience were discuss ed.