The aim of this study was to appraise stress levels of nurses working with mentally ill psychiatric hospital patients. This quantitative study was conducted in seven psychiatric hospitals in the city of Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, and was carried out with the use of the following instruments: Socio-demographic descriptive information of the sample and an inventory to identify the stress symptoms of the nurses. The sample size was 48, of which 42 (92.9%) were female. The results of the sample showed that 62% felt no stress, 30.9% were at the endurance level and 7% at the exhaustion level. No statistically significant relationship was found between the hours of work performed and the symptoms of stress. Therefore, the present study showed no occurrence of stress in these nurses.

This research deals with the experience of women in climacterium. Symbolic interactionism and Grounded Theory were the theoretical and methodological framework of the study. Its objectives were to understand: how the experience of the climacterium is defined by the women; what were the psychosocial processes of interaction lived by the women; and to develop a theoretical model representing the experience of the women in climacterium. The strategies used to collect the data were participant observation and open ended interviews. The subjects were women in the age group of 45 to 60. The sample was of 30 women. The study revealed that the climacterium experience may be constituted of two phenomena: REJECTING CHANGES which is characterized by the women as a moment of loss and TRYING TO COPE WITH CHANGES, which represents the moment construction of new concepts with possibilities of reconstruction of life. Supported by these two phenomena, the central category was generated: LIVING THE INEXORABILITY OF TIME AND ITS CHANGES WITH LOSSES AND POSSIBILITIES which is fundamental to the generation of the theoretical model representing the experience of women in climacterium.

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