Psychological empowerment strategies in infertile women: A systematic review

Abstract

Infertility requires long-term care and treatments which would influence different aspects of health including the mental health of infertile women. The present study was conducted to determine strategies for psychological empowerment of infertile women. This systematic review was performed on previously conducted clinical trials. To achieve the intended studies, databases of Magiran, Scientific Information Database, Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science and also Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials website were searched using "infertility and infertile women" as the keywords. The inclusion criteria were being an interventional study and assessing the psychological status of infertile women. Performed studies in Iran with no time limitations were evaluated. Based on the Jadad criteria, studies with a score of 3 or more were enrolled in the systematic review. After assessing the quality of the studies, 21 studies were enrolled in the review for final evaluation. Reviewing the conducted studies showed that educational and counseling interventions could be effective in improving the aspects of psychological well-being of infertile women. Existing evidence revealed that applying coping strategies is effective in improving the quality of life in infertile women, which consequently lead to the improvement of psychological empowerment of infertile women.