International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | January 2020 | Vol 9 | Issue 1 Page 190 International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Raj P et al. Int J Basic Clin Pharmacol. 2020 Jan;9(1):190-194 http://www.ijbcp.com pISSN 2319-2003 | eISSN 2279-0780 Original Research Article Women post menopause: assessment of quality of life and socio-demographic correlates Purnima Raj 1 , Namita Deshmukh 2 *, Avinash Borkar 2 INTRODUCTION The World Health Organization has defined menopause as twelve months of amenorrhea after the last menstrual period. This process is the result of complete or partial absence of oestrogen release from ovaries as well as depletion of ovarian follicles. 1 With the increasing life expectancy, a woman spends one third of her life in menopause. 2 Menopause can have psychological, physical, and vasomotor symptoms along with sexual dysfunction. Nearly, 50 to 80% of women complain of menopausal symptoms such as hot flushing, sweating, sleep disturbance tiredness, and depression. 3 Secondly, osteoporosis and heart disease risk may increase due to age-related increases in weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. Current health care model treats the symptoms but fail to recognize that severe symptoms profoundly affect a woman‟s personal and social functioning and ultimately the quality of life (QOL). QOL has been defined by the WHO as the “individual's perceptions of their position in life in the context of the cultural and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns.” 4 The assessment of QOL approach focuses on DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20195785 1 Department of Pharmacology, Late Shri Lakhiram Agrawal Memorial Government Medical College, Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, India 2 Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Nizamabad, Telangana, India Received: 17 November 2019 Revised: 15 December 2019 Accepted: 15 December 2019 *Correspondence: Dr. Namita Deshmukh, Email: namitad0712@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Menopause can have psychological, physical, and vasomotor symptoms along with sexual dysfunction, Current health care model fail to recognize that these symptoms profoundly affect a woman‟s personal and social functioning and ultimately her quality of life. Hence, this study aims to assess the Quality of life of post-menopausal women and finding out socio-demographic factors affecting quality of life. Methods: A cross-sectional study in an urban slum area was undertaken and 105 females between 45-65 years of age were interviewed using menopause-specific quality of life (MENQOL) questionnaire. Results: The mean age of these study participants was 54.13±4.05 (45-62) years. Out of 105 post-menopausal women included in the study, 20% were illiterate, 26.7% had completed education up to Secondary school level. Total MENQOL scores ranged from 62-148 and total mean score was 101.3±23.44. Conclusions: Menopause affected not only physical health of a woman but also affects psychosocial aspect of life and this was well evident from the present study where MENQOL scores were higher indicating poor quality of life after menopause. Ageing, lower education, lower socio-economic status, unemployment and no spouse support were contributing to the poor quality of life. Keywords: Menopause, Quality of life, MENQOL