Moderate anxiety, whether acute or chronic, is not associated with ovarian suppression in healthy, well-nourished, Western women.

The relationship between psychological stress and reduced fecundity has been a matter of speculation and investigation for decades. Most previous studies have been compromised, however, by a number of problems including ambiguous direction of causation, poorly operationalized variables, and the confounding of psychological with energetic stress. We present a two-part study of the relationship between moderate anxiety, both acute and chronic, and daily measures of ovarian steroid and corticosteroid levels in saliva.