Attitudes to menopause: intriguing discoveryAnother intriguing discovery was the shift in attitudes to menopause as experience took over from expectation. At the beginning of the study about 70 per cent of those questioned said they would feel relieved or neutral when their menstrual periods stopped, and 3 per cent expected to feel regretful. Five years later, the overwhelming majority of women were positive or neutral about menopause. In other words, as women experienced menopause, their feelings about it became more positive. One explanation for this positive shift could be that women have been 'sold' too pessimistic a view of menopause and feel relieved when they successfully negotiate it. The pessimistic sales pitch arises from folklore belonging to past eras and, paradoxically, to scientific studies of women's health, many of which have concentrated solely on users of the health care system. These studies are biased because participants tend to be women experiencing the most difficulty, who do not represent all women. Another possible explanation for the shift in views could lie in evolving approaches by women to their own health problems. Many women are becoming more aware, more questioning, and they are educating themselves better on health issues than did their mothers and grandmothers. 'We have a growing population of consumers who do not accept drugs or the doctors' say-so any more,' says Nancy Peck, former coordinator of the Healthsharing Women's Health Information Service funded by the Victorian Health Department and the National Women's Health Program. Women like Ms Peck were in their thirties in the 1970s and were vocal about issues like rape, abortion and the Pill. As she enters her fifties, she and other women of her generation are speaking out about key issues such as menopause and HRT. The current generation of forty-year-olds and fifty-year-olds has benefited also from weakened taboos associated with sex, reproduction, menstruation and menopause. While we are living longer and have more reason to worry about heart disease, fractures, strokes, lung cancer and breast cancer than previous generations of women, we are talking openly about these health problems" within the family, and usually with friends and trusted doctors as well, discussing how we might tackle them in our own lives and in the lives of our daughters and grand-daughters. *16\38\8* Hormonal «Medications Without a Prescription» |
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