Going through the silent passage: understanding menopause in the rural context

• Main Author: Villamon, Olga D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1998
• Subjects: Menopause; Climacteric; Public health; Women's health services; Rural women; Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1922
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study sought to understand some facets of the menopause scenario in the rural setting. Conducted in a town of Mainit, Surigao del Norte in the southern part of the Philippines, the study generated the perceptions on menopause of both professional and non-professional women, their response to menopause as a health problem, their sources of information about menopause and their beliefs on menopause. The study also tried to understand the local health providers' response to menopause as a reproductive health concern. Findings revealed that menopause in this rural town was not seen as a medical problem that demanded medical attention of both professional women and the non-professional women unless the symptoms became intolerable. A little less than one-half of the women interviewed had anticipated problems on menopause, and most of these problems were not actualized. The experiences of the women undergoing menopause were varied but most of them mentioned some symptoms relating to physical changes. Few women mentioned changes in the menstrual cycle as symptoms of menopause. The respondents had the tendency to label all symptoms that came simultaneously with menopause as menopausal symptoms. The women's approach to treatment of menopausal symptoms was more curative than preventive. Self-and home treatment was used and consulting both medical and traditional health care givers was rare. The primary information source of the women were e older women related to them by family relations in the case of the non-professional, and co-teachers in the case of the professional. Although they did not consider access to information on menopause as difficult, most of the respondent wanted a health program designed specifically for menopausal women. Local health providers looked at menopause as a normal process that comes to the life of a woman. They contended that menopause was not considered a major concern in the area. But unlike the women respondents, the health providers recognized that there are unmet health needs of the menopausal and post menopause women that their respective health centers could not provide because of strategic and logistic reasons. In contrast to the western view that menopause is a crisis stage that required medical attention, the women and health providers in Mainit believed that this was not so. The absence of a medical approach to menopause contributed to the gap between the menopausal women and the health providers with the former turning to other women for information and themselves for management of symptoms. Interventions in the form of counseling and providing Pap smear rather than chemotherapeutic and technological treatments compatible to women's beliefs and perceptions of menopause are suggested.