Menopause Problems Well Being Marital Satisfaction and Intervention

Abstract

Menopause is transition period in the life of women. There was 44.00 per cent of newlinemenopause among middle aged women of Dharwad and Bagalkote districts. With high newlineprevalence of menopausal women, 480 working and non-working women were randomly newlineselected and correlation and differential design were used. Household survey pointed out that newlinethere was 23 per cent of hysterectomy cases in urban area of Bagalkote district, hence 88 newlinewomen underwent hysterectomy were selected randomly for in-depth study. Menopausal newlinewomen of both the districts were assessed by using standard scales for studying their newlinemenopausal problems, well-being status, marital satisfaction, stress, socio-economic status newlineand sexual distress. Results highlighted that, 2/3rd of respondents experienced joint and newlinemuscular discomfort, 37-50 per cent of them had hot flushes and 40-60 per cent of them were newlinefound to be suffered from irritability and mental exhaustion. Rural working and urban nonworking newlinewomen reported significantly severe level of menopausal problems than nonworking newlinewomen. Natural menopausal women experienced more of somatic problems whereas newlinehysterectomy women suffered significantly high level of somatic as well as urogenital newlineproblems. Half (50.00 %) of the respondents belonged to overweight category. More than half newline(55.00 %) of the respondents from both areas did not follow coping methods to reduce newlinemenopausal problems. Working women had significantly high level of general stress as well newlineas sexual distress. Age at menopause was negatively significantly related and positively newlineassociated with menopausal problems, well-being, stress and marital satisfaction. newlineAn educational package was developed to promote well-being and also to overcome newlinemenopausal problems of women the efficacy of the package was tested on 120 women were newlinecomprised of intervention group (n=80) and control group (n=40). Post intervention results newlineindicated improvement in well-being score (6.52 to 54.34%) and decrease in stress score newline(50.00 to 10.00 %) but no such changes were observed amo