Psychosocial Factors in Women During the Climacterium: A Community Study

Abstract

Physical and psychological symptoms, when experienced by women in middle life are frequently attributed to the menopause, particularly if no clear medical nor psychiatric diagnosis can be made. As a consequence, the term “menopausal syndrome” has come into common usage and is often used as a “ragbag diagnosis”, referring as it does to a plethora of ill-defined physical, psychosomatic and psychological symptoms. In a recent search of the clinical literature, one of the present authors arrived at a list of no less than 45 symptoms all of which had been attributed to the menopause by some writer at some time (Greene, 1976). These included headaches, palpitation, dizzy spells, poor concentration, lack of energy, excitability, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, crying spells and so on. Indeed the menopause has become an explanation for almost any discomfort experienced by women in middle life. Yet the only symptoms which are truly characteristic of the menopause are the vasomotor ones, that is, disturbances in body temperature experienced by women in the form of hot flushes and excessive sweating.