[Menopause: apropos of some psychological and psychiatric aspects]

Menopause, begining of woman's involutional period, may (or must) be systematically treated by estrogens, preventing most of immediate or later menopausel complications and limitating effects of aging. This use of estrogens (which causes many controversies and resistances) has also probably a positive neuropsychic effect. The author reminds classical psychopathological explanations supporting mental troubles of this period which are usually considered as reaction to a crisis, instead properly psychiatric diseases are included in involutional pathology. A short review of psychiatric litterature indicates that psychiatrists refuse any specificity to menopausal psychic troubles. He points out also "the phobia of menopause", the increasing fear of old age in a "youth culture", in spite of progress of woman emancipation, social liberation following biological liberation (birth control, decrease of child mortality, etc). The reports of Jaszmann and Van Keep and Kellerhars are summarized. They show the main role of sociological, economical and familial factors in appearance, intensity and duration of climacteric troubles and progressive degradation with aging of: personnal integration, intellectual and cultural integration, and human relation-ships, and mental sanity. These reports seem to indicate that menopause is only a critical period of the slow process of aging and decadence. But systematic estrogen treatment and improvement of femine social condition should change drasticelly these troubles and this decadence.