Attitudes Towards Menopause Among Iranian Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Context: Women’s attitudes towards menopause have an important impact on menopausal experiences, including the perceived severity of symptoms and women’s general lifestyles during menopause. Therefore, such attitudes should be considered when developing management and counseling programs for women in menopausal transition. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to examine Iranian women’s attitudes towards menopause. Evidence Acquisition: In this study, searches for English articles were conducted using PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar databases, and searches for Persian articles were conducted using Magiran, SID, and Google Scholar. All articles published until April 30, 2015 were considered, using the keywords “Menopause,” “Attitude,” “Iran,” and “Iranian women.” Out of 1160 potentially relevant publications, 21 documents met the inclusion criteria. Then, the quality of the studies was examined by two reviewers independently using additional pre-specified criteria. Measures of the effects were pooled, and random effect meta-analysis was conducted using Stata software version 11. Results: Out of the 21 selected documents, 11 studies were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The results of the meta-analysis on 3453 participants showed that 25% of Iranian women had positive attitudes, 58% had neutral attitudes, and 17% had negative attitudes towards menopause. Conclusions: The majority of Iranian women had neutral attitudes towards menopause, which may be evidence of poor knowledge about menopause. Therefore, it is suggested that appropriate educational programs be developed and implemented by policymakers in order to increase knowledge and raise awareness among women about menopause.