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Health
Issue
date: Sept. 18-20, 1998
A surprising way to get pregnant
Reducing depression and stress may increase fertility, finds important research by a psychologist.
By Beth Brophy
 ncreasing evidence indicates depression may hamper women's ability to
conceive.
Psychologist Alice Domar is preparing to release new,
sure-to-be-controversial study results at a medical meeting in San Francisco Oct. 5.
She will discuss an important study looking at the impact of group psychological
interventions, such as mind/body techniques and support groups, on infertility.
Her new results are expected to amplify these already reported blockbuster stats: Of
174 infertile patients she studied over a seven-year period, all of whom completed
her 10-week stress-reduction program, 44 percent got pregnant within six months of
completing the program, and 38 percent went on to give birth. The women who were the
most depressed when they entered the program had a 60 percent pregnancy rate.
Domar, 40 and the mother of a toddler daughter, is director of the Mind/Body Center
for Women's Health and the Infertility Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center, affiliated with Harvard Medical School. She has a doctorate in health
psychology and is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. A "happy side effect" Domar's workshops began in 1987 and were designed to help women who
had been through an average of 3 1/2 years of unsuccessful infertility treatments cope
with the emotional crisis of infertility. Instead, the program produced what Domar
calls a "happy side effect": As women learned to reduce and manage stress and
received individualized nutrition and exercise advice, many got pregnant.
In 1994,
Domar received a grant of $547,000 from the National Institute of Mental Health to
look at the impact of group psychological interventions on infertile women. In 1996,
Harvard gave her seed money to expand her study of the role emotions play in women's
medical conditions. In the United States, 1 in 6 couples is infertile. (Couples who
fail to conceive after at least a year of trying are regarded as infertile.) "What we do is not weird"
"Many people in the medical community are going to find
it hard to believe that the mind can affect fertility," says Domar.She rankles at being lumped with New Age practitioners of unproven alternative medicine. "What we do is not weird," she says. Indeed, the Mind/Body Medical Institute was founded by
cardiologist Herbert Benson, the respected author of The Relaxation Response.
Relaxation techniques cool the nervous system; lower heart rate, muscle tension and
oxygen consumption; and even can decrease blood pressure.
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