The objectives of this study are to investigate menstrual experiences and to identify physical and psychosocial factors affecting perimenstrual changes, menstrual attitudes and self-care behaviors among junior college students. Data were collected longitudinally for two years. Participants are 1,045 junior college students aged 18-22 years old. All participants gave informed consent before participating in this study. The questionnaire consisted of scales regarding menstrual experiences; menstrual condition, perimenstrual changes, menstrual pain and self-care behavior, menstrual attitude and related factors; self-esteem, optimism/pessimism tendency, satisfaction of gender role, and life-style. Over 90% students experienced menstrual pain and 98.4% students experienced negative perimenstrual changes while only a few students experienced positive changes. About one-fourth of the students continued to experience negative perimenstrual changes and a negative attitude toward menstruation during the perimenstrual period over the 2-year observation.

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This study investigated factors affecting to the perimenstrual changes, menstrual attitudes and self-care behaviors of junior college students. Data were collected longitudinally for two years. Participants are 1,045 junior college students aged 18〜22 years old. The questionnaire consisted of scales regarding menstrual condition, perimenstrual changes, menstrual pain, menstrual attitude, self-esteem, optimism/pessimism tendency, satisfaction of gender role, and life-style. Perimenstrual changes and menstrual pain was affected by physical factors; blood flow, duration, years after menarche. Other important factors were psychosocial factors; optimism/pessimism tendency, self-esteem, stress and stress release, perceived health and life-style. Menstrual attitude and negative perimenstrual changes mutually affected each other. During menstrual education given to college students, we supported not only the need for menstrual self-care education but also the need for reframing negative menstrual attitudes, stress management skills and healthy lifestyle.

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We studied the association of climacteric symptoms with attitudes toward sexuality and sexual function in 653 climacteric women with a mean age of 52.2±3.6 years with unidentified complaints. Patients who had "completely lost interest" or "lost more than half of interest" in the opposite sex accounted for 35.4% of the women, while those who "felt no change in interest in the opposite sex" accounted for 44.0%, and not quite half. Climacteric scale scores were significantly higher for women who had lost interest in sexual life than for those who felt no change in interest. The incidences of complete and relative dyspareunia were 5.76% (36/625) and 5.44% (34/625), respectively. When we examined the relationship between the age of women with unidentified complaints and difficulty in leading a sexual life, the mean ages of women who felt "considerable difficulty" (48.9±4.2 years; P=0.0038) and that of women who felt it "totally impossible to lead a sexual life" (49.2±6.3 years; P=0.089) were significantly lower than the mean age of women who felt no difficulty in leading a sexuallife (51.7±4.9 years). We conclude that: (1) Unidentified climacteric complaints attenuated sexuality; and (2) more than 10% of climacteric women with unidentified complaints were suffering from dyspareunia, from theearly climacteric phase. These findings indicate that, in future climacteric treatment, we should recon-sider "sex" and take a positive approach to treatment as well as make effort towards improvement of unidentified complaints associated with dyspareunia.

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Persistent crying of a 1-2 month-old baby is distressful to a mother, particularly a primipara, and it can lead to a crisis situation when the mother feels herself unable to cope. In order to understand such mothers' experiences and to reveal factors associated with the development of a crisis situation, a qualitative study was carried out on 30 healthy primiparas whose babies also had no health problems. A semi-structured interview was used to question the mothers concerning continuous crying by their babies at one month or later after birth and their own feelings about the crying. A content analysis revealed that all mothers faced persistent crying by their babies and that for 19 of the women the situation reached crisis proportion. Significant factors associated with the crisis were the mother's perception of the crying and availability or non-availability of support from family members or others. Mothers who experienced crisis felt themselves unable to stop the crying by any means, or did not receive support from others when their babies were crying. The analysis also disclosed that: ・ Mothers' not having access to appropriate information about child care experienced anxiety because they did not know what to expect ・ Mothers who became confused by information about child care experienced loss of self-confidence ・ Mothers unable to decide what information applied to them tended to become irritated by persistent crying Thus, systems for helping primiparas dealing with their babies' crying during the first two months after birth should take into account the women's own perceptions about the crying and how well they use information on child care.

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