Anxiety and depression before and after the menopause.
OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to investigate the anxiety and depression at postmenopausal women. METHODS: We studied 32 postmenopausal and 32 premenopausal patients aged between 40-55 years in Kinrikkale University Medical Faculty Obstetric and Gynecology Department. We performed Beck depression scale and State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) I and II on those patients. Blood samples were taken from each patient. We used student's t test, pearson correlation analysis. RESULTS: Beck depression test results were 21.3 +/- 6.7 and 15.1 +/- 5.6 in postmenopausal and premenopausal women respectively (p < 0.001). STAI-I were 50.4 +/- 9.1 and 47.5 +/- 8.5 in this 2 groups (p = 0.19) and STAI-II values were 47.5 +/- 9.1 and 45.4 +/- 7.5 (p = 0.33). We could not find a correlation between anxiety-depression and blood FSH, LH and E2 levels. We found a correlation between parity and depression (r = 0.423 p = 0.01). There were positive correlations between anxiety and depression tests (r = 0.489 p = 0.01 for STAI-I and r = 0.398 p) = 0.01 for STAI-II). CONCLUSION: Depression rate is significantly higher in menopausal women.