[Psychosocial effects of the onset of menopause and physical symptoms in early postmenopause]

Abstract

57 women were studied who were GMP patients, whose spontaneous menopause had occurred 6 to 36 months ago and who did not take any sexual hormones. Purpose of the study was to determine psychosocial influences on the time of onset of the menopause and on climacteric complaints. It was found that the overall impairment by hot flushes and pain in the limbs during this phase of life was largely independent of the studied parameters. With regard to the time of onset of the menopause there was a trend to an linear relationship between the factor "social dependence" and the age at which menopause occurred, as well as a link between that age and period intervals 5 years before cessation of menstrual bleeding. An enhanced tendency to exhaustion representing a nonspecific menopause syndrome was found particularly often in women who were highly "socially dependent". There was no relationship between climacteric complaints on the one hand and, on the other hand, experiences of loss, social stress and relief factors, partnership relations, experiences of menarche, menstruation and menopause as well as basic feeling tone; however, a depressive tone, as defined by the Giessen test, was clearly predominant in the examined population. It is concluded from these results that flushes in the early postmenopausal phase are mostly a biological phenomenon, whereas vegetative concomitant complaints are markedly dependent on psychosocial factors that correspond to a typically "feminine" role enactment as postulated by social convention.