November 2014

Infertility Treatment Abroad: A Psychological Angle

Affordable prices, no wait list for eggs, good standards of health care... Those are usually the core factors taken into account in favor of choosing infertility treatment abroad. But isn't there one important factor missing?

Our health is, first of all, our mental health. Once we believe we're good looking and self-confident, we're good looking and self-confident. There's though no wonder a great amount of researches related to infertility indicate infertile cases can be often attributed to a psychological cause in a woman or a man.

It's nearly impossible to list all psychological reasons that might have influenced one's ability to have a baby. A little girl is treated badly by her father who keeps telling her if she doesn't bring good grades from school, she's worth nothing. The little girl is a young beautiful lady now, but once diagnosed with infertility, her whole inner world is fallen apart... Unconsciously, as if she was in her childhood, she feels worthless because she doesn't earn “good grades”, i.e. she can't get pregnant.

Even if the negative way of thinking doesn't root in one's childhood, there's still that feeling of guilt because you can't have a “normal” family and satisfy your partner because you can't have a baby. There're still those imaginative pictures of childless future when one's mopping in solitude.

Doctors from all over the world have a warning news for those mentioned above: the high level of stress and poor psychological health in general sabotage one from obtaining a positive effect from the prospective treatment.

To mention some, Singaporean fertility specialists hold the opinion that too much concentration on the wish to become parents could be paradoxically the main reason of negative outcome of undergone infertility treatment. They are firmly convinced that what an infertile couple should at first place work on are their feelings to each other, and also eliminating of stress-generating factors in their lives. Israeli doctors are even more thoroughgoing: they insist on the natural ability of nearly every woman having a uterus to give a birth, with their puproseful treatment, and with the help of God.

Once psychological condition of a patient affects the whole outcome of infertility treatment, going for the treatment abroad could appear to be a smart solution, sometimes even when you can afford treatment in your own country.

First of all, changing of the habitual environment is itself profoundly life change-promising from the psychological point of view. Second: travelling to another country, no matter the reason for a journey, is perceived by our brain as a vacation, and we all know: vacations help. Third: once we're somewhere else in the world meeting people who deal with our problem, we feel we're not alone in this world, and isn't it the basic human's need not to be alone in this world?

As longer we live, as more fears we have. Paradoxically, even a simple journey might become a huge challenge once we're stuck in a rut with our life.

„If they can't help me in my own country, how do I know they'll help me abroad?”, this is the question women and mean might ask themselves when opt for a particular place for treatment.

Obviously, simply taking infertility treatment in another country doesn't guarantee a positive result by itself. However, taking psychology of change into account, it might be an additional chance towards improving one's psychological health which, by-turn, might subsequently lead to other life-enhancing changes.