ABSTRACT
For several decades in Western society widespread beliefs have prevailed that mid-aged women undergo considerable and debilitating experiences as they pass through the menopausal transition. Yet many women report they have found their actual experiences to be more tolerable and manageable than they had expected 1,2 . The well-designed large community-based studies in the last decade from Australia, Britain, North America and Scandinavia have provided little substantive support that the negative predictions apply to most mid-aged women 3-7 . However, it is important to recognize that within these large cohort studies, a proportion of women do seek help for a wide range of troublesome experiences and that not all women undergo a relatively benign passage with only transient disturbance. The natural transition to menopause occurs for most women between the ages of 45 and 55 years with a mean age of about 50-51 years. This onset has not changed for at least two centuries and appears to be unrelated to age at menarche, socioeconomic factors or body mass index (BMI).
