Emirati women's attitudes towards menopause: Implications for health care policy.

Abstract

Objectives To investigate the attitudes of Emirati women aged 30–64 years towards menopause and determine the relationships between these attitudes and their sociodemographic and reproductive characteristics. Study design A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted with 497 Emirati women attending five primary health care centres in Dubai using a multistage stratified and clustered random sampling technique. Emirati women were interviewed face-to-face via a structured questionnaire with two parts: sociodemographic and reproductive characteristics and the attitudes towards menopause scale. Results The mean ± S.D. of age was 42.06 years ± 8.716 (median 40 years). Mean age at menopause for the study sample (N = 436) was 49.94 years ± 4.593 (median 50 years). Of the respondents, 36.6% had completed high school, and 41.4% had graduated from university. Approximately, 70.8% of the women were premenopausal, 13.1% were perimenopausal and 16.1% were postmenopausal. Sixty-four percent of the respondents had never used oral contraceptive pills, while 32.9% were past users; 44.6% were employed outside the home. Mean average attitudes score ± S.D. was 2.42 ± 0.26 (minimum score of 1 indicates very negative attitudes, maximum score of 4 indicates very positive attitudes). Statistically significant differences in mean average attitudes score were noted for employment and menopausal status, and mean average attitudes score was positively correlated with age. Premenopausal women held more positive attitudes towards menopause than peri- and postmenopausal women. Conclusions Emirati women displayed neutral to positive attitudes towards menopause and premenopausal women exhibited more negative attitudes towards menopause than postmenopausal women.