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Women's midlife symptom‐reporting in China: Cross‐cultural analysis
Author(s) -
Shea Jeanne L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american journal of human biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.559
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1520-6300
pISSN - 1042-0533
DOI - 10.1002/ajhb.20490
Subject(s) - china , hum , demography , medicine , east asia , headaches , population , gerontology , psychology , history , psychiatry , sociology , archaeology , performance art , art history
This report draws on data from the author's China Study of Midlife Women (CSMW) to test the popular notion that East Asian women have a low level of midlife symptom reporting compared with North American women. Symptom‐reporting frequencies from a general population sample of 156 Chinese women of age 45–55 in China are compared with rates from published studies on midlife women in Japan, Canada, and the U.S. While the Japanese women's rates of reporting 16 core symptoms are uniformly low, the Chinese women's frequencies range from low to moderate. Except on hot flashes and headaches, the Chinese women's symptom‐reporting rates tend to be more similar to the North American than to the Japanese sample. This analysis demonstrates that women's midlife symptom reporting in China cannot be equated with findings on women in Japan. Sources should be more cautious in making generalizations about East Asian women in this regard. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:219–222, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.