Exploring quality of sleep and its related factors among menopausal women

Sleep, a basic physiological need of all humans, appears to be both integrative and restorative. However, studies have reported that 33-51% of women show a dramatic increase in sleep disturbance in the mid-life years, a time when they enter menopause. The purposes of this study were to (1) explore the prevalence of poor sleep quality in menopausal women; (2) identify the relationship between sleep quality of menopausal women and its related factors; (3) predict the possible explanations of how the related variables affect sleep quality of menopausal women; and (4) provide recommendations for future strategies that aim to improve sleep quality of menopausal women. A cross-sectional, correlation coefficient design was used. Purposive sampling was employed to recruit 197 menopause women from a small town in central Taiwan. T-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression were used for data analysis. The results were as follows: (1) overall, the total score for sleep quality was 5.55 +/- 3.47; 57.9% of subjects were identified as good sleepers and 42.1% as poor sleepers; (2) there were significant differences in quality of sleep related to occupational situation, history of chronic disease, menopausal status, number of chronic diseases, and number of menopausal symptoms (t = - 3.49, - 3.37, p < .01; F = 3.62, p < .05, F = 4.95, 5.35, p < .01); (3) depression and aging were strongly related to quality of sleep (r = .57; .22, p < .01); (4) 36% of variance in quality of sleep can be explained by depression and aging.