Anxiety and sexual stress in men and women undergoing infertility treatment

Objective: To better understand the specific nature of the relationship between anxiety and sexual infertility-related stress in men and women. Design: Prospective study. Setting: University-affiliated teaching hospital. Patient(s): Consecutively referred patients referred for in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination (306 women, 295 men). Intervention(s): None. Main Outcome Measure(s): Fertility Problem Inventory (FPI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Result(s): Women reported greater anxiety and sexual infertility stress than men. However, men and women showed a similar pattern in the way anxiety symptoms were related to sexual infertility stress, with subjective anxiety and autonomic anxiety having the strongest relationship. Anxiety symptoms accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in sexual infertility stress for both sexes and predicted sexual stress to a considerable degree in men. Conclusion(s): Although this study found that there is more similarity than difference in how men and women experience anxiety and sexual infertility stress, the strong linkage between anxiety and sexual stress in men was surprising, because men tend to report less sexual stress and also less anxiety. Sexual stress among infertile men may be more closely tied to performance anxiety rather than to a more general deterioration in sexual satisfaction associated with infertility.