[Psychosocial backgrounds of climacteric symptoms and complaints]

Postal questionnaires about psychosocial factors related to climacteric symptoms and complaints were sent to women subjects with such symptoms, and to volunteers without such symptoms. Controls were selected from among the volunteers. Each of 216 subjects was matched at random with one of 639 volunteers within one year of the subject's age. Thus, 216 matched-pairs were created, each consisting of a subject and a control. Significantly high relative risks of the following factors as estimated by McNemar's test were shown by a case-control study: social: few intimate friends, low educational level, husband engaged in unskilled labor, employed subject; psychic: feeling of poor health, low self-esteem, perception of lack of respect by people surrounding the subject, dissatisfaction with present life, anxiety about the future, feeling of being a burden to family and/or community. Moreover, correlations between various items listed above were examined by means of the chi-square test. Statistically significant correlations were found for the following pairs of items: low educational level, suggesting low socio-economic status, and either dissatisfaction with present life or feeling of poor health, and few intimate friends, suggesting a lack in potential social support, and either low self-esteem or anxiety about the future. The first mentioned pairs were predominantly associated with severe climacteric symptoms and complaints and the latter with mild symptoms and complaints.