Socio-health seeking profile of women in Post Menopausal Age group: A study in a Rural block of Ganjam district, South Odisha

Background: Menopause is defined as” the time when there has been no menstrual periods for 12 consecutive months and no other biological or physiological cause can be identified.” Objectives: 1) To describe the socio-demographic characteristics of post menopausal women in study area. 2) To explore out the various factors related to the age at menopause. 3) To assess the health seeking behaviour of study population. Materials and Methods- This study was a cross sectional community based observational study which was carried out among Postmenopausal women in 8 selected villages of Chhatrapur block of Ganjam district, Odisha for a period from October 2016 to September 2018 with a sample size of 247. Results- In the present study, 39.3% of the study population attained menopause at the age 46-50 years and 11.7% at the age 51-55years. Factors like socioeconomic status, age at menarche ,parity ,marital status , addiction status, family history of early menopause ,BMI and contraception user were found to have statistical significant association with the age at menopause. On logistic regression by adjusting all the variables it was found that age of study population [AOR=3.030 (1.639-5.602), educational qualification[AOR=11.798 (4.002-34.777)], and occupation [AOR= 3.913 (1.296-11.82)] were found to be significantly associated with the health seeking behaviour. Conclusion-In the present study the mean age at menopause was 46.98±4.080 years. Majority of postmenopausal women perceived that menopause occurred due to normal process of ageing. But less than half of the respondents sought treatment because of lack of knowledge about the symptoms and availability of treatment modalities. Awareness and knowledge about all the aspects of menopause should be provided to them through the health workers and women organisation. Keywords: Behaviour, Health seeking, Menopause, Postmenopausal women.