Study to assess knowledge, attitude and practice regarding menopause among menopausal women attending outdoor in tertiary care centre

Abstract

Background: India is a developing country and it is growing rapidly in all aspects of life. Health status of population has improved and hence the life expectancy. Women are affected positively by this improvement and their life expectancy has become longer than men. Women all over the world now have to spend almost 1/3rd of their lives in menopausal years. Therefore, menopause now is a concerning matter to maintain and improve women's health. Methods: This analytical study was conducted for a period of 1 year in postmenopausal women attending outdoor in Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Sultania Zanana Hospital, Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. The instrument used in this study was structured questionnaire consisting of 19 items in Hindi language, developed on the basis of the objective of the study. Results: In the present study, 32.72% of menopausal women had knowledge of menopausal symptoms. 39.09%, 52.72% and 22.72% knew that menopause increases risk of cardiovascular, osteoporosis and breast cancer respectively. 28.18% think menopausal women should consult a physician, only 4.54% of menopausal women are aware of HT. 64.55% of menopausal women perceive menopause as loss of youth. 67.28% think menopausal psychological symptoms affect quality of life. 57.28% think that menopause means end of sexual life. 30% think that menopause is associated with maturity and experience. 46.27% think that absence of menstruation in the postmenopausal period is a relief. 39.10% think physical changes of menopause are inevitable and hence acceptable. 29.09% had consulted a physician at the onset of menopause. Conclusions: Our study shows that majority of women have a negative outlook towards menopause considering as a loss of youth and higher susceptibility towards health problems. This shows that the awareness towards menopause should be increased by IEC (information, education, and counseling), so as to help these women to live their postmenopausal years more healthy and active.

Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices towards menopause among postmenopausal women - A Cross-sectional study

“…In this study maximum (61.6%) of participants were attained their menopause in the age between 45-50 years, which was similar to a study conducted by Nahid Yasmin et al that majority of the respondents (63.5%) were the age between 45-50 years (Yasmin et al, 2009). Majority (76.9%) were literate in the present study in contrast to another study (Pathak et al, 2017), where, 55.45% of participants were illiterate. Most of the participants (90.4%) belonged to middle class socioeconomic background.…”

“…In the current study, 44.2% of women considered postmenopausal bleeding as abnormal, but in the study by Pathak et al,16.3% women considered postmenopausal bleeding as abnormal (Pathak et al, 2017). Other studies reported that majority participants had knowledge about that menopause is associated with many chronic diseases like cancer, osteoporosis etc., (Pathak et al, 2017) (Thomas, 2005. In our study we also found that 36.5% respondents were aware about it.…”

“…In the practice portion, there were 11 questions and each healthy practice scored 1 and those who were not adopting healthy practices they were given 0 score. (Pathak et al, 2017) The answer of the questions were designed as yes, no and don't know form. According to people's knowledge was classiied into three categories: poor (0-5 score), moderate (6-10 score), good (11-15 score) knowledge.…”

“…Each and every women's experience towards menopause are different and many of them are unaware about the menopausal symptoms and health complications related to menopausal symptoms (Pathak et al, 2017). Physical, psychological, vasomotor and sexual dysfunction are the major symptoms in this stage (Kim et al, 2015).…”

Factors affecting age at menopause among Saudi women in Riyadh, SA: a cross-sectional study

“…Further analysis is needed to adjust for age. our results regarding knowledge about HrT and its use to alleviate menopausal symptoms are consistent with those of previous studies [45][46][47]. in addition to women's lack of knowledge about HrT use, it seems that underuse of hormonal therapy could be due to physicians' hesitance to prescribe these medications despite current recommendations that favour the use of HrT for patients younger than 60 with no contraindications [48].…”