Psychology Unit

The desire to have a child and facing difficulties in conceiving one represents, for most people, a situation of genuine life crisis where many feelings and emotions emerge.

People undergoing fertility treatments often experience anxiety and depression at some point during the process, along with feelings of hopelessness, guilt, helplessness, powerlessness, sadness, frustration, anger, fear, and low self-esteem. Communication problems between partners, social withdrawal, and interference with work performance are also common.

Therefore, at INEBIR we are aware of the need and importance of protecting the mental health of the people who come to our clinic, prioritizing emotional care and offering a specialized psychological intervention service.

How can we help you and how?
The main objective of the Psychology Unit at INEBIR is to prevent and detect emotional distress that may arise during fertility treatments and to promote the well-being and quality of life of the people served.

Our main function is to identify worries and fears, promote acceptance of emotions, and foster the development of adaptive personal resources to alleviate emotional distress. We will help you resolve issues such as:

• — How do we manage to relax?
• — How do we find strength and what strategies do we follow to face one or more cycles?
• — How do we avoid awkward questions?
• — Who did we talk to about the issue and what did we tell them?
• — How to cope with pregnancies in your social circle?
• — How do we prevent a couple's relationship from deteriorating?
• — How do we deal with work and frequent absences from work?
• — How do we deal with the losses?

Our psychology team will accompany you from the beginning of treatment, assessing your emotional needs and providing you with:

• — Emotional support during the treatment process for proper emotional management.
• — Psychological treatment for people who request psychological assistance
• — Interventions at the individual and/or couple level.
• — Group therapies: a meeting of people who discuss their experiences under the guidance of a professional.

It is important to know that the support we offer is not limited to situations arising from the diagnosis or those that appear during the course of treatment. We also offer help during the post-treatment stages, both in cases of success and failure, with specific interventions for the grieving process.

We also conduct follow-ups during the pregnancy process and after birth to observe their development and provide support to parents in the parenting process.

The head of the Psychology Unit is part of the multidisciplinary team of the INEBIR Egg Donation Program, and is responsible for conducting the psychological evaluation interview with people who request to be egg donors at our clinic.

Fertility treatment with donor eggs, sperm, or embryos is, in our experience, one of the times when doubts and emotional crises most frequently arise, and where psychological intervention is essential. Therefore, we offer:

• — Specific interventions to resolve doubts regarding donation.
• — Guidance and psychological support for recipients to facilitate appropriate decision-making.

The purpose of these interventions is to encourage expectant parents to express their fears. The main questions that participants typically ask are the following:

• — Is this type of treatment common, or are we the only ones?
• — How do you select the donor?
• — What do I know about the donor, and what does the donor know about me?
• — Will he/she look like us? What will our son/daughter be like?
• — Should I tell our child? When and how should I tell them?
• —Will my child accept me as their mother/father if they knew I wasn't completely their mother/father? Will I accept it?
• — What psychological and genetic risks will it have?

We believe it is essential to address all these questions and provide you with as much information as possible so that you can make a free decision in accordance with your personal values. The information we provide during appointments is based on studies with scientific evidence regarding the influence of genetics and environment, the development of emotional bonds between parents and children, and the laws that regulate the donation process in our country.

We also have a Mutual Aid ProgramAt INEBIR, we understand that when making decisions about organ donation, it's helpful to connect with others who have been in the same situation. Therefore, we encourage sharing your experiences, emotions, and thoughts, facilitating communication among recipients.

Recurrent miscarriage is the unintended termination of pregnancy that occurs three or more times consecutively. The loss of a desired pregnancy often leads to depressive symptoms, anxiety, low self-esteem, and triggers a grieving process. It has a significant psychological impact, with feelings of injustice, a perceived lack of control, sadness, discomfort with social situations, attribution of responsibility and guilt, and fear of it happening again.

At INEBIR, we consider multidisciplinary treatment essential in these cases, and we provide specific interventions in the grieving process. We also monitor subsequent pregnancies to alleviate anxiety and fears throughout the pregnancy.

It is well known that emotional factors affect sex life. Relationship problems, lack of trust, communication difficulties, fears, depression, guilt, or having suffered traumatic experiences are frequently related to sexual dysfunctions. In our Unit, we provide psychological support for sexual difficulties that prevent individuals or couples from enjoying sexual health and intimate encounters.

In our Psychology Unit we provide psychological assessment and therapy to people who request psychological care.

At INEBIR, we believe that psychological support is a fundamental tool for developing personal resources to cope with pain and improve the quality of life of people who suffer:

• — Endometriosis
• — Chronic fatigue syndrome
• — Chronic pelvic pain
• — Fibromyalgia

To this end, our Psychology Unit offers individual and group interventions.

In our psychology unit, we also offer guidance and support for single-parent families. We are increasingly seeing models of motherhood that differ from the conventional model of a father, mother, and biologically related children. Many of our patients come to our clinic having decided to become single mothers. Our psychology unit supports our patients by answering their questions and providing helpful resources.

Similarly, we offer a service to help families when times of change or transition arise, to overcome the challenges that these situations present.