The Relationship between Menstrual Pattern and Menstrual Attitude Dimensions in Reproductive-age Women

Objective: Women's attitudes towards menstruation play a critical role in shaping their body and psychosocial integrity. Menstruation is affected by some bio-psychosocial factors; therefore, more in-depth understanding is needed to cope better with the consequent difficulties. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between menstrual patterns and menstrual attitude dimensions in reproductive-age women. Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted on 170 women referred to the urban health centers of Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran, from January 2019 to December 2019.  The Menstrual Attitudes Questionnaire (MAQ) and Verbal Multidimensional Scoring (VMS) systems were used to collect the required data. The features of the menstrual cycle were also recorded. Results: The overall response rate was 96.74%. Women with dysmenorrhea perceived menstruation as a more debilitating, bothersome, and predictable event and less denied any menstrual effect (p=0.001). The results also revealed that the subjective menstrual blood loss was associated with higher levels of perceiving menstruation as a natural (p=0.008), bothersome (p=0.026), and anticipatory event (p=0.021) and reporting less denial of any menstrual effect (p=0.001). Moreover, women rated menstruation as a more bothersome event by increasing the menstrual bleeding length (p=0.014). There was no significant relationship between the other features of the menstrual cycle with menstrual dimensions (p>0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that women's attitudes towards menstruation was associated with menstrual pain, length, and subjective volume of menstrual flow.  These factors could be used to modify women's attitudes towards the natural phenomenon of menstruation. Keywords: Attitude; Menstruation; Dysmenorrhea; Menarche; Menorrhagia.