Women's knowledge and attitude toward the Menopause

Introduction: Menopause is a normal developmental transition that all women undergo with advancing age. During menopause, women may experience certain physical, mental, social and psychological changes. Familiar with these changes and understand the reasons, helping women to be better prepared to adapt with these changes. Health education is one of the most important ways to women's empowerment; as we know, the first step in any training is recognition and analysis of subject's knowledge and attitude. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and attitude towards menopause among premenopausal women. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 400 healthy-non menopausal women aged 40-45 attending urban primary health care centers. Samples were selected based on stratified sampling. The study was conducted after human subject was obtained. The data gathering instrument was a tree part questionnaire: demographic characteristics, questions to assess knowledge and attitude questions. The collected data were analyzed by Pearson correlation, independent t test, Spearman correlation and ANOVA statistical tests using SPSS software. Results: The results of this research showed that Average score of knowledge was 63.57± 10.79 and Average score of attitude was 61.21± 12.73. In this study 8% of the subjects had poor knowledge, 68% had moderate and 38.5% had good. Furthermore, 81.5% of women had positive attitude and 18.5% had negative attitude towards menopause. Pearson correlation showed that the relationship between knowledge and attitude was no significant and Spearman correlation showed that between knowledge and attitude with economic status and levels of education was significant relationship (p< .001). Conclusion: Providing greater access to information and support are essential steps in improving the women health during menopausal years.