Evaluatıon of menopausal complaınts and copıng strategıes

This is a descriptive study and was performed to investigate menopausal complaints and coping strategies among the women provided health care by Health Clinic 9 in the city of Aydın, Turkey. Data were collected at face to face interviews with a questionnaire and Menopausal Complaints Screening Checklist between 17 September 2007 and 31 December 2007. A simple random sampling was used to select 132 menopausal women. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Chi-square test.The mean age of the women was 48.98 ± 3.87 years. 41.7% of the participants were primary school graduates, 23.5% were high school graduates, 18.2% were university graduates or had higher education, 87.9% were married, 50% were employed and 78.8% had sufficient income. 68.9% of the women received information about menopause. 42.9% of the participants received this information from a doctor, 56.8% had a positive attitude towards menopause, but 43.2% had a negative attitude towards menopause.The most frequent three menopausal complaints were flushing-night sweating (72.7%), nervousness-irritability (71.2%) and sleeplessness-tiredness (68.9%), the most frequent three complaints the women felt anxious with were palpitation (19.0%), nervousness-restlessness (14.9%) and flushing-night sweating (8.3%) and the most frequent three complaints they asked for recommendations about were musculoskeletal pain (49.4%), palpitation (35.7%) and headache-dizziness (34.8%).The women had various strategies to cope with the complaints. Education and counselling provided by nurses for menopausal women should be more effective and appropriate education programs should be conducted regularly.Key words: Menopause, menopausal complaints, coping strategies.