Mental health around pregnancy differs depending on how couples conceived

Couples who conceived through IVF and other fertility treatments have opposite mental health trajectories around the time of pregnancy to couples who conceived naturally, according to a new study by UCL and University of Padua researchers. The researchers found that the mental health of women who conceived naturally improved around the time of conception, and then gradually improved and returned to the levels observed two years before conception; whereas the mental health of women who conceived through Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) declined in the year before pregnancy, and then gradually recovered. As the findings show that couples who undergo MAR are able to return to their previous levels of mental health, this may suggest that the stress associated with fertility treatments does not have severe or long-term implications for the mental health of the parents, or, by extension, for the longer-term well-being of MAR-conceived children. On the other hand, the authors say the findings could also help explain the increased risk of poor birth outcomes among MAR-conceived children, as prior research has shown that maternal stress and birth outcomes are linked. The peer-reviewed research published in Demography tracked the mental health of men and women using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) - an annual survey which took place between 2009 and 2018 of 40,000 households. The study sample included 2,151 women with a natural pregnancy and 146 women who underwent MAR (medically assisted reproduction) to conceive.