Daily Medical Records

The menstrual function has been the source of many interpretations, myths and fears over the story. For a long period of time of menopause was interpreted as the accumulation of dangerous health, determinants of mood swings or even madness.

In this context, the menopausal woman was considered as being decreased, a situation was happening socially irrelevant when it met its mission to perpetuate the species. Even today this vision endures pejorative when it is a negative view of a woman, saying that “it’s menopause.” Western culture promotes the myth that menopausal women suffer changes in personality, prone to depression and decreased sexual interest, which in turn reinforces the negative consideration that women have their own process of menopause .

Although it has been confirmed that during the postmenopausal period interest and sexual activity tends to decline as a result of the effects of decreased estrogen, such as vaginal dryness and increased vaginal infections, has also been found that in many cases not only there is a decrease in libido, but may even experience an intensification of women to feel free from the fear of unwanted pregnancy and the care for young children.

In many instances, menopause can probably become the center of projection of all the causes of conflicts that occur concurrently with physical, emotional, work and family when, in general, would attribute these psychological symptoms associated menopausal process the combination of physical changes, cultural influences and expectations and individual perceptions delproceso. Affective disorders are probably the most often been associated with menopause. Even Kraepelin referred to it when writing about involutional melancholia in relation to menopause.

However, recent studies come to demystify this connection, since they find no significant evidence that would establish the existence of a depressive disorder associated specifically to that period, or the increased prevalence of depression among menopausal women, pointing out the exception in those Women with prior mood disorders associated with cyclical or ongoing events related to reproduction (women who have previously suffered from premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression and / or depression in the years before menopause.) On the contrary, it has been an increase in the incidence of depression in the years before the complete cessation of menstruation, as has been suggested that the hormonal imbalance that occurs at this stage what causes psychological symptoms (fatigue, irritability, sleep problems, abrupt changes of mood …) by the same mechanism that acts in premenstrual syndrome.

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