 Experimental emotional disclosure in women undergoing infertility treatment: Are drop outs better off?Efharis Panagopoulou, Anthony Montgomery and Basil Tarlatzis Social Science & Medicine, 2009, vol. 69, issue 5, 678-681 Abstract: So far, the beneficial effects of personal written emotional disclosure have been mainly examined in relation to past or current stressful/traumatic experiences. The anticipation of a medical event has rarely been studied within this paradigm. This randomized-controlled study examined whether written emotional disclosure would reduce emotional distress and increase pregnancy rates in women undergoing in-vitro fertilization treatment. Participants recruited from women who were undergoing IVF in the north of Greece (n = 148) were randomized to an emotional-writing condition, a fact-writing condition and a control condition. Outcomes included fertility-related distress, general distress and a positive indication of pregnancy. Psychological and medical information about women who refused to participate were also collected, and this represented a fourth group for analysis (n = 66). Results indicated no significant difference between groups in terms of emotional distress. However, a significant difference was observed with regard to pregnancy results, with the non-participants group reporting the highest percentage of pregnancies. The present study did not support the hypotheses that emotional disclosure will reduce infertility-related or general psychological distress and improve pregnancy outcomes in women undergoing in-vitro fertilization treatment. However, women who refused to participate in the study were more likely to get pregnant. Differences in the beneficial effects of emotional disclosure are discussed. Keywords: Expressive; writing; Distress; Infertility; Drop; outs; Emotional; disclosure; Greece; Women (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:69:y:2009:i:5:p:678-681 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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