Representations of menopause and their health care implications: A qualitative study

Introduction: Menopause is primarily represented as a medical condition with its associated body changes described as symptoms in need of treatment. The purpose of this study was to determine whether women's representations of and responses to menopause reflected this medical perspective. It is based on a secondary analysis of data from an earlier study in which the menopause experience of 17 middle-aged women was examined. Methods: The original study used a qualitative methodology in which data were collected by means of semistructured interviews and then analyzed for primary categories of meaning. Interview transcripts were reanalyzed for the current study. Results: Findings of that analysis indicate that, although the women were relatively uninformed about menopause, they identified themselves as menopausal on the basis of both positively and negatively defined physical and psychological changes that they associated with it. These changes were also associated with aging in general. Furthermore, although the women responded to menopause as a time-limited physiological event that sometimes required medical attention, they perceived it primarily as a marker or symbol of more general life-stage developmental issues and responded with both lifestyle changes and a search for new meaning. Discussion: These findings indicate that the women's perception of and response to menopause reflected both medical and nonmedical representations. Health care implications include the importance of health care providers supporting menopausal women in their search for both information and meaning, and of researchers investigating both medical and nonmedical approaches to reducing the negative health-related effects of decreased estrogen levels in menopausal women.