Quality of life in heterosexual menopausal women: The indirect effect of sexual and marital satisfaction, menopause representations, and psychological morbidity

Abstract

Menopause may negatively impact Quality of Life (QoL). Our study used a cross-sectional design and research participants were 99 women in natural menopause. In our study, we analyzed the relationship between age at menopause onset, hormone therapy use, duration of couple relationship, menopause duration, psychological morbidity, marital satisfaction, menopause representations, and QoL following the Wilson and Cleary Health-Related QoL conceptual model. The authors found that negative representations, lower marital satisfaction, psychological morbidity, and shorter duration of menopause contributed to lower QoL. Moreover, the authors found that psychological morbidity and menopause representations (identity and control/cure dimensions) had an indirect effect between marital satisfaction and vasomotor, psychosocial, and sexual QoL. Also, we found that age at the onset of menopause showed a moderating effect in the final model. Future studies should replicate these results in a longitudinal design and analyze how the variables that showed a moderating role and indirect effects will function as moderators and mediators, respectively, over time.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the ethical commission for health (Protocol Ref.: 119-16).

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Additional information

Funding

This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Center (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (Ref.: UIDB/PSI/01662/2020).