Stress and its contributing factors among Pos...

Stress and its contributing factors among Postmenopausal women in a tertiary care hospital Kochi

Author Name : Ms. Sruthi R Nair, Mrs. Soumya Raj K, Mrs. Anju Philip Thurkkadayil

ABSTRACT

Problem: The level of stress and its contributing factors, anxiety, and depression among Postmenopausal women.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 212 postmenopausal women who attended outpatient departments of a tertiary level hospital. The samples were selected using the consecutive sampling technique. The tools used for the study were Demographic and clinical data, Menopause Stress Scale (MSS) for assessing Stress, Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety, and Beck Depression Inventory Scale for assessing Depression. Data were collected after ethical clearance and informed consent.

Results: Out of 212 Postmenopausal women, 41.0% had no evidence of stress but a mild and moderate level of stress was evidenced with 26.9% and 32.1% respectively. Related to the level of anxiety, 44.8% were normal but 27.8% had mild and 27.4% had a moderate level of anxiety identified. The study found that 67.5% of Postmenopausal women were normal without depression whereas, 20.8% and 11.7% had mild and moderate levels of depression respectively. The study identified that age, marital status, and occupations as the contributing factors of stress among these selected populations. There was a moderate positive correlation between Stress and Anxiety by spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (r=0.528) and (r=-0.028) respectively.

Conclusion: age, marital status, and occupation were considered as the contributing factors for stress and also found that there was a moderate positive correlation between stress and anxiety.

Keywords: postmenopausal women, stress and contributing factors, anxiety among postmenopausal women, depression among postmenopausal women, menopause stress scale