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Psychiatric disorders in menopause

Background

The aim of this study was to examine the occurrence of psychological symptoms in women during menopause.

Materials and methods

The study was carried out with a sample of 117 menopausal women, who presented as outpatients to the psychiatric clinic of Giannitsa general hospital after gynecological referral. Their somatic complaints were recorded and clinical and demographic characteristics like age, family characteristics (number of children), cultural level, place of residence, (village or city), duration and conditions of menopause as well as circumstances of menopause presentation (normal or surgical) were determined. We studied life events and the period they occurred. A clinical psychiatric interview ensued along with completion of DSM (SCID) questionnaire. Psychometric methods like BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) and STAI (State, Trail, Anxiety Inventory) were used for diagnostic evaluation. Diagnosis was based on DSM IV.

Results

Significant symptoms were identified in 32 women (27.4%). Some sort of anxiety distress was identified in 17 women (53.1%). Depression was diagnosed in ten women (31.3%), while paranoic psychosis was found in only one case (3.1%). In four cases diagnosis was determined after a second attempt using DSM IV due to exacerbation of symptoms of preexisting personality distress.

Discussion

A high percentage of women in menopause (27.4%) is associated with psychiatric symptomatology needing appropriate treatment.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Kalfas, D., Didaskalou, T., Polyzoi, K. et al. Psychiatric disorders in menopause. Ann Gen Psychiatry 5 (Suppl 1), S184 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-5-S1-S184

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-5-S1-S184

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