Menopausal Health Status of Women of Kapilvastu District: Assessment of Menopausal Symptoms Using Menopause Rating Scale

Abstract

Background: Non-reproductive health of women has drawn an attention in public health, in recent years, due to population aging and lifestyle transition. Women face various health problems in their post-menopausal years, mostly in low income countries particularly with high fertility. Nepal, in particular has scarce of knowledge regarding menopause and the related problems. Methods: It was a descriptive, cross-sectional study carried out among women aged 40–60 years in Kapilvastu district. A total of 924 respondents were selected applying multistage cluster sampling and were interviewed face to face using structured questionnaire. Key informant interview was conducted with the health professional of each selected VDC. Data was entered in Epi-data 3.1., cleaned and analyzed using SPSS full version 16.0. Results: Almost all (98.8%) women reported at least one symptom listed in Menopause Rating. Sexual problems (80.8%), physical and mental exhaustion (76.3%) and joint and muscular discomfort (71.3%) were common. The occurrence of at least one psychological symptom and urogenital symptom was noticeable, 91.2% and 91.8% respectively. Sexual problems (11.9%), joint and muscular discomfort (9.5%) and sleep problems were perceived very severe by women. The proportion of women suffering from somatic and urogenital symptoms increased from premenopausal to menopausal stage. Indeed, premenopausal women had high of depressive mood and anxiety than perimenopausal women, while irritability was prevalent at uniform proportion among different stages. The major complaints of premenopausal women were sexual problems (78.3%), physical vi and mental exhaust (69.4%), while it was sexual problems (86.5%) and physical and mental exhaustion (76.4%) among peri-menopausal women. The later were highly prevalent in menopausal women as well (81.7% and 81.5% respectively). Surprisingly, only two out of 100 were aware of menopause symptoms and issues. Comprehensive knowledge on menopause was lacking even among health care providers.

Conclusions: Health education campaigns on health risks of middle aged women and capacity building of health service providers on management of menopausal issues need a greater start. A large study on national sample is must to provide a clear portrait on health needs of menopausal women in Nepal. Keywords: menopausal symptoms; menopause; menopause rating scale; prevalence; women.