Women and menopause: Beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The North AmericanMenopause Society 1997 menopause survey

Objective: The main purpose in organizing this survey was to collect inform ation relevant to The North American Menopause Society's (NAMS) educational mission and to document women's knowledge of, and attitudes toward, menopa use. Design: During June-July 1997, The Gallup Organization conducted 750 teleph one interviews with a randomly selected sample of women 45-60 years of age from across the United States. Women were asked about their sources of info rmation on menopause, what changes in health they anticipated as a result o f menopause, why they used hormone therapy. and their attitudes toward meno pause as a natural or a medical event. Results: Women are more likely to believe that depression and irritability are associated with menopause than heart disease, but only a few associate menopause with an increasing vulnerability to either memory loss or Alzheim er's disease. Relief of physical symptoms of menopause was mentioned as the reason for starting hormone therapy more often than to protect against ost eoporosis (25% relative to 15%), or to prevent stroke or a heart attack (10 %), or to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (2%), The singl e main source of women's information on menopause was a health professional (49%). The majority of women who were already menopausal or experiencing m enstrual changes expressed an attitude toward menopause that was either neu tral (42%) or positive (36%). Conclusions: Women are divided in their views of menopause, some seeing it as a medical condition requiring medical treatment, whereas others see it a s a natural transition to be managed by "natural" means. Providing women wi th accurate, up-to-date information and enhancing communication between hea lthcare providers and menopausal women remain the challenges for NAMS. (Men opause 1998;5:197-202, (C) 1998, The North American Menopause Society.).