Resilience, Depressed Mood, and Menopausal Symptoms in Postmenopausal Women

Post-menopausal women (n=169) aged 48-68 years completed the Resilience Scale, the center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD-10), the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS), and a questionnaire containing personal and partner sociodemographic data.

The median age of respondents was 54. Among the women, 55.6% had increased body mass index, 13.0% used hormone therapy, 25.4% used psychotropic drugs, 14.2% had hypertension, and 17.8% were current smokers. Forty-five percent of the women had depressed mood (CESD-10 scores > 10) and 34.9% had severe menopausal symptoms.

Lower resilience scores correlated with depressed mood and severe menopausal symptoms (higher total, psychological, and urogenital MRS scores). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that resilience scores positively correlated with exercising regularly and inversely correlated with CESD-10 scores (depressed mood).

In this post-menopausal study, depressed mood and participation in regular exercise correlated with lower and higher resilience respectively.

Reference:

Perez-Lopez FR, Perez-Roncero G, Fernandez-Inarrea J, Fernandez-Alonso AM, Chedraui P, Llaneza P. (2014). Resilience, depressed mood, and menopausal symptoms in postmenopausal women. Menopause, February, 21 (2): 159-64.