Psychopathological manifestations during menopause and involution are in most cases represented by neurosis and psychopathic conditions, as well as nonpsychotic variants of the depressive syndrome.
According to the data of E. M. Vikhlyaeva, D. D. Orlovskaya (1979), the following syndromes are most often observed at this age : neurasthenoid-like, obsessive-phobic, depressive-hypochondriac, asthenodepressive, asthenosenestopathic.
Mental disorders during menopause usually develop against asthenia. Patients complain of decreased performance, activity, unusual for them mental and physical fatigue. This is often regarded by patients as a manifestation of laziness and looseness, a loss of the ability to control oneself, to which they react painfully. Some patients in the lobby of exhaustion have irritability and anger, a sense of internal tension. Rest somewhat improves the condition, but a complete reduction of asthenia does not occur.
In the clinical picture, during the menopause, unpleasant sensations arise in the internal organs, parastheses, such as a rush of heat, a burning sensation, numbness, creeping creeps, and cooling. Often there are unpleasant sensations in the external genital area, usually in the form of itching. Senestoiatii occurs less frequently, patients experience painful, hardly verbally described sensations of “soft bones”, “blood transfusion in the heart,” numbness of the head.
Usually, mood changes are observed – anxiety, emotional vulnerability, resentment. These disorders prevail in non-psychotic forms of depressive syndrome (anxiety-depressive, depressive-hypochondriacal). An important role in the appearance of depressive mood is played by violations of sexual desire, more often towards its decrease.
In depressive-hypochondriac syndrome, along with mood disorders, patients have thoughts about the presence of diseases of their internal organs that the doctors allegedly do not recognize. Such patients persistently require consultations, consultations and calm down not long after their fears are not confirmed at the next examination.
Obsessive-phobic states are manifested in patients with obsessive fears for their health or the health of their loved ones, obsessive memories of unpleasant episodes from their own lives. Psychopathic disorders that occur during menopause can be considered as a sharpening of previously inherent character traits. Most often, a hysteroform syndrome occurs: patients experience emotional lability, moodiness, they are unhappy with the supposedly insufficient attention to their loved ones, require increased attention to themselves, their well-being and health. There is a tendency to exaggerate the existing unpleasant sensations, theatricality, and demonstrative behavior. These patients at a young age are distinguished by liveliness of emotions, brightness of perception, sociability, love to be in sight. Sometimes during menopause such premorbid features as mental rigidity, pedantry in the performance of official and family responsibilities are sharpened.
Neurosis and psychopathic disorders in women usually develop between the ages of 40-50 and often coincide with menopause. Their duration is from several months to 10 years (an average of 3-5 years). In most patients, further reduction of neurosis and psychopathic disorders occurs, in some they take a protracted nature, in some cases they transform into a picture of nresenile psychoses – involutional melancholy or paranoid.