Anxiety and depression before and after the menopause

Objective: Our purpose was to investigate the anxiety and depression at pos tmenopausal women. Methods: We studied 32 postmenopausal and 32 premenopaus al patients aged between 40-55 years in Kirikkale University Medical Facult y Obstetric and Gynecology Department. We performed Beck depression scale a nd State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)I and II on those patients. Blood sa mples were taken from each patient. We used students t test, pearson correl ation analysis. Results: Beck depression test results were 21.3 +/- 6.7 and 15.1 +/- 5.6 in postmenopausal and premenopausal women respectively (p < 0 .001). STAI-I were 50.4 +/- 9.1 and 47.5 +/- 8.5 in this 2 groups (p = 0.19 ) and STAI-II values were 47.5 +/- 9.1 and 45.4 +/- 7.5 (p = 0.33. We could not find a correlation between anxiety-depression and blood FSH, LH and E- 2 levels We found a correlation between parity and depression (r = 0.423 p = 0.01). There were positive correlations between anxiety and depression te sts (r = 0.489 p = 0.01 for STAI-I and r = 0.398 p = 0.01 for STAI-II). Con clusion: Depression rate is significantly higher in menopausal women.