Sexual Quality of life, Depression, and Anxiety Symptoms in Women Candidates for Social Egg Freezing

摘要

Depression and anxiety are two phenomena that affect quality of life as well as sexual function. In this study we aimed to investigate the correlation between quality of sexual life in women candidates for Social egg freezing (SEF) and their depression and anxiety symptoms and to our knowledge, this relation has not yet been fully explored. We surveyed 166 women seeking SEF and asked them to fill out the Sexual quality of life questionnaire Female (SQOL-F), with four subscales: Psychosexual Feelings, Sexual and Relationship Satisfaction, Self-worth-lessness, and Sexual Repression, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). We found that psychosexual feelings and sexual repression were negatively associated with anxiety (r=-0.304 and r= -0.174, respectively) and depression (r=-0.255 and r= -0.237, respectively). There was also statistically negatively significant correlation between HADS-D score and self-worthlessness (r= -0.231, p = 0.002). The SQOL-F total score and HADS-A or HADS-D scores showed low yet negatively significant correlations (r= -0.197 and r=-0.236). Participants who considered virginity to be important in their life, had reportedly lower mean score of the SQOL-F than others (p = 0.020). In contrast, opponents, who did not consider virginity to be of importance in life, declared lower mean scores of anxiety and depression than others. We concluded that women seeking SEF exhibited a satisfactory level of SQOL, and low magnitude of depression and anxiety symptoms. We discovered inverse relationship between two domains "psychosexual feelings" and "sexual repression" with anxiety and depression. Participants who believed that virginity must be preserved until after marriage also claimed that they had suffered mentally more than others from sexual repression. Whereas, the other group of women who did not have this conviction, were faced with less anxiety and depression than proponents i.e. believers in having a chaste life.