How do women cope with couples' infertility? Using language to explore elaborative processes

Aims/background: Infertility diagnosis and related treatment can cause profound psychological discomfort and a variety of psychopathological symptoms. This study aims at investigating Referential Process linguistic measures applied to autobiographical memories of women facing fertility issues, hypothesising to find different elaboration and symbolisation capabilities according to the specific memories expressed.

Design/methods: Forty-four women (mean age 36.05; SD = 4.66) undergoing Assisted Reproduction Treatment (ART) enrolled at a Hospital fertility medical department in Rome completed a brief socio-demographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The interviews aimed to collect memories of a neutral event, a positive event, a negative event, and the moment they realised that the couple had a fertility problem. The transcriptions of the interviews were analysed using Referential Process (RP) linguistic measures with IDAAP software.

Results: Data analysis revealed several significant differences in RP linguistic measures when comparing the different autobiographical episodes. Specifically, the narrative regarding the process of gaining awareness about fertility issues exhibited a high use of abstract words and a strong reflection and reorganisation process, but a low symbolisation process compared to other episodes. Women engaged in this narrative seem to provide explanations for the infertility issues rather than discussing an awareness process. This is consistent with the use of abstract and reflective language, which is related to defensive strategies as the use of rationalisation with emotional distancing in infertility episodes emerged.

Conclusion: This highlights the importance of addressing women's internal emotional processing at the onset of ART to promote both mental and physical wellbeing.