Health seeking behaviour and its socio-demographic determinants among menopausal women in Lucknow

Abstract

Background: Menopausal women are those who have not experienced regular menstrual bleeding for 12 months or more. It is a physiological event, but its psychological, physical and sexual consequences will prevail throughout post-reproductive years. Some women are silently suffering without knowing what is happening to their own body and they don’t know about where to get help. Aim of the study was to estimate the health seeking behaviour among menopausal women in Lucknow and to find the association of Health Seeking behaviour among menopausal women with the various socio-demographic parameters.Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted from August 2020 to January 2021, among 206 Menopausal women of 46-65 years in rural and urban field practice areas of Community Medicine Department, KGMU, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow.Results: (42.7%) of the total study participants went to the health facility for menopause related symptoms. (14.6%) had heard about HRT and (1%) were current user of HRT. (43%) responded that they will be fine with time, (29%) responded that they didn’t need to go to the health facility, (21.8%) had financial constrains. Literacy, residential status and category was found significantly associated with health seeking behaviour among menopausal women.Conclusions: Poor health seeking behaviour was observed among women for menopausal symptoms. Majority of them responded that they will be fine with time, other common reason for not going to health facility was that they were not aware about menopausal symptoms, they think that they don’t need to go to the health facility.