Study on menopausal symptoms among women residing in urban and rural areas

Background: Menopausal symptoms are experienced by almost every woman during their menopausal transitions. Menopausal symptoms are categorized into physical and psychological menopausal symptoms. It includes, night sweats, hot flushes, unusual tiredness, depression, mood swings, loss of sexual urge, frustration and other behavioural changes are also seen. The objectives of the study were to assess and compare the menopausal symptoms, and its association with selected socio-demographic variables among women residing urban and rural areas of district Ludhiana, Punjab. A comparative study was conducted on 100 women residing in urban and rural areas of district Ludhiana who had achieved menopausal within last 1 year. Convenience sampling technique was used to draw the sample. Structured 5 point Likert scale was used to assess the menopausal symptoms among urban and rural women residing in district Ludhiana, Punjab. Present study revealed that mean age of menopause in urban women was 49.78 years whereas in rural women was 48.28 years. Regarding menopausal symptoms (as per physical symptoms) most of the women residing in urban and rural areas experienced unusual tiredness (81% and 84% respectively) whereas as per psychological symptoms, most of women in urban area experienced depression (52%) and in rural area most of women experienced mood swings and forgetfulness (70%). The factors like menopausal history, lifestyle pattern were found to be significant whereas age, menstrual history, BMI were found to be non-significant. It has been concluded that menopausal symptoms were more prevalent among rural women than urban, association of lifestyle pattern and menopausal history was found statistically significant.