Infertility and Suicide: On World Suicide Prevention Day
Sunayana Sukka (Ph.D in Psychology),
Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive after one year of regular unprotected sexual intercourse. Globally, 10-15% of couples are affected, leading to psychological, emotional, and social distress. In a developing society like India, infertility is not just a medical condition, but it also causes psychosocial stigma. While the physical symptoms are widely addressed, the psychological impact, especially when it leads to mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation or suicidal risk, receives very little attention.
Women often face greater emotional pain due to family, societal pressure around motherhood; men are also affected and silently suffering due to stigma around male infertility and emotional breakdown. The stress of repeated failures of treatment or frequent abortions or miscarriages, and societal judgment often worsens their mental well-being. Often, friends and family members are hardly supportive, which leads them to Isolation and hopelessness, leading towards suicidal ideation.
A very few research studies quoted a strong relation between infertility and increased risk of suicidal ideation, especially in women. A study was conducted by Ghosh Dastidar to investigate Suicidal risk among 100 infertile women and 100 fertile women by using simple random sampling, undergoing fertility treatment in Kolkata, India, and the results of the MINI Scale revealed that 25% of the infertile women suffer from suicidal risk/suicidal ideation.
According to the Accidental Deaths and Suicides rates in India report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB),374 individuals died by Suicide in 2021 due to infertility, accounting for roughly 0.2% of all recorded suicides (NCRB,2022) and in 2024it raised to 0.3% study by (Armstrong & Vijayakumar, 2018; Arya et al., 2021; Raj et al., 2024). While representing a small proportion of suicidal deaths in India, Infertility has emerged over a decade and tolling mental health among couples who are facing the issues. Routine screening of clients during fertility treatments reduces the emotional turmoil among them. It’s an alarm call to the individuals to seek help from mental health experts/psychological intervention.
