Relationship between the Acceptance of Menopause and Mental and Physical Complaints in Menopausal Women

1987 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 60480484
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Nursing
• Research Institution: St. Luke's College of Nursing
• Principal Investigator: OKAWA Akiko St. Luke's College of Nursing, 母性看護学研究室, 講師 (40160428)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ISHII Hitomi St. Luke's College of Nursing, 母性看護学研究室, 助手 (40168175) ; HORIUCHI Shigeko St. Luke's College of Nursing, 母性看護学研究室, 講師 (70157056) ; YAMAMOTO Aiko St. Luke's College of Nursing, 母性看護学研究室, 講師 (80182608) ; IWASAWA Kazuko St. Luke's College of Nursing, 母性看護学研究室, 講師 (80176544) ; KONDO Junko St. Luke's College of Nursing, 看護研究・看護教育・母性看護学研究室, 教授 (00054578)
• Project Period (FY): 1985 – 1987
• Keywords: Menopause / Menopausal Period / Complaints in the Menopausal Period / 閉経の受容

Research Abstract

This investigation was made for the relationship between the mental and physical complaints in the respective stages of pre-, peri- and post-menopausal periods and the acceptance of menopause and the influencing factors. The random sampling of the women aged 35 - 60 living in Tokyo was made with 420 effective answers. Many of them accepted the menopause positively. The response of the subjects were positive as there were some people who understand that the menopausal period is a natural process and do not have unpleasant self-conscious symptoms and felt that it is easier to live without problems. However, many in the pre-menopausal group replied that the menopausal period accompanies mental and physical disorders. On the other hand, many in the post-menopausal group replied that such symptoms did not accompany. The subject group had the symptoms which accompanied some troubles in their daily lives. The mental and physical complaints were determined by asking whether the 48-item symptom s existed or not. More than 90% of the subjects had some kind of symptoms. For all the subjects, there were many instances of the systemic symptoms (easily get tired), orthopedic symptoms (stiffness at the neck and shoulder, lower back pain), mental symptoms (forgetful). The group which was expecting the menopause soon had more statistically significant instances of neuroendocrine symptoms (irregular menstruation, hot fit, sensitive perception). Many of the subjects who had more than seven kind of symptoms had troubles in their daily lives and felt that the symptoms were painful and tried to get along with the symptoms. As the factors influencing the acceptance of menopause, the number of complaints, the number of current life stress in daily life, self-esteem, index if sex-role orientation and attitude towards menopause were extracted. For the future, the research suggested that there is a need for the consultation by the experts for those who felt some troubles in their daily lives as well as the need of education for healthy women before menopause.