Linking Menopausal Status, Climacteric and Psychological Symptoms: Evidence from Middle Aged Pakistani Women

Abstract

Menopause is a crucial and normal developmental phase in a life of woman. During this period, women experience social, psychological and physical changes. Menopausal symptoms experienced by women may differ enormously from culture to culture; consequently, there is a need to examine these signs and linked to risk factors in different population. This current paper designed to investigate the relationship between attitude towards menopause and climacteric and psychological symptoms of Pakistani women in menopause. Moreover, this study also investigated the differences in psychological and climacteric symptoms among postmenopausal premenopausal and perimenopausal women. Purposive sampling technique was used based on cross-sectional design. One hundred fifty participants (premenopausal, n = 57; perimenopausal, n = 33; postmenopausal, n=60) were included from different private and government hospitals of Peshawar, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan from 2015 to 2016. Age ranged from 40 to 60 years. Two scales, Greene Climacteric Scale (Salik, & Kamal, 2010) and depression, anxiety and stress scale (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995; Zafar & Khalily, 2015) were used to measure psychological, physical, vasomotor sexual Dysfunction, stress, anxiety and depression. This current paper results demonstrated that postmenopausal women tended to have somatic, sexual dysfunction and psychological symptoms as compared to premenopausal, perimenopausal women. This study would be helpful to understand health and psychological problems of menopausal women.