Menopauzatünetek és identitásfejlődés összefüggései a menopauza időszaka során

Abstract

Background and Aims: Middle aged women are affected by menopause globally. The great variety of menopause symptoms  experienced during this period often results in a substantial physiological and psychological strain for daily living. At times, symptoms could be intense and grave so that they may provoke a transformation of various aspects of identity, which is under substantial challenge during midlife anyway. These processes may lead to a crisis of identity in women at this time period. As a solution for the crisis women may turn towards generative activities (activities concerning the well-being of the next generation), or their motivation for self-development may increase. The aim of our study was the examination of the relationship between menopause symptom severity and various aspects of identity transformation in middle aged women.
Methods: In the study, we examined Hungarian women aged 45–55. We have distributed an online questionnaire in menopause themed social-media groups, which consisted of the following: Demographic questions, Hungarian version of the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS), the Developmental Crisis Questionnaire (DCQ), the Dimensions of Identity Development Scale (DIDS), and the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS). In order to test our hypotheses we used correlation tests and mediation analysis.
Results: Based on our analysis strong menopause symptoms show a positive relationship with increased identity crisis. Furthermore, strong menopause symptoms affect generativity and motivation for identity development indirectly, through the increase of identity crisis in an unexpected way: they decrease generativity and motivation for identity development. However, menopause symptoms in themselves do not show a significant relationship neither with generativity, nor with motivation for identity development.
Discussion: Women in our sample show at least mild menopause symptoms and hence many of them experience an identity crisis. This result in itself is a call for professionals involved in physically or mentally caring for women in menopause, since health issues during the menopause transition may influence women’s quality of life after the menopause.