An AFP story on Yahoo! News has been getting big attention: Psychotherapy helps infertile ‘superwomen’. Some researchers found that stress many be an issue with infertility, and that going for counseling for lifetyle stress can actually have a dramatic impact on women becomming fertile. Again, the biological relevance of psychotherapy is in the spotlight, and I hope that those struggling with these issues may consider counseling as part of the course of treatment.

Similarly, a news piece listed right here at PsychCentral discusses a researcher (Jane Ussher) who argues that PMS and post-natal depression are not caused by a hormonal imbalance, but are the result of women repressing anger and being unsupported and misunderstood. That is a pretty controversial position, and perhaps those conditions may be exacerbated by psycho-social factors, but I not sold on hormonal factors not being a significnat piece to the puzzle. But at the minimum, it reframes the debate that the answers to making these processes less stressful and negative may lie with social support systems rather than medications.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 22 Jun 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.