ArticlePloS one2021
The relationship between social support, stressful events, and menopause symptoms.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Perceived stress as a mediator between negative life events and psychosocial quality of life during the menopausal transition: A path analysis.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- The relationship between spousal support, menopausal symptoms, and sexual attitudes in menopausal women: A cross-sectional study.BMC women's health · 2026Article
- Understanding the menopausal experiences of women with intellectual disabilities: A scoping review.Journal of intellectual disabilities : JOID · 2026Article
- Qualitative research on health issues and background factors of menopausal female workers: an examination from physical, psychological, and social perspectives.Journal of rural medicine : JRM · 2026Article
- A qualitative study on the phased nature of the self-acceptance process for working women experiencing menopause.Journal of rural medicine : JRM · 2026Article
- The knowledge-behavior gap in nutritional literacy and its associations with chronic disease in older adults: a mediation analysis.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Understanding the menopause journey.Climacteric : the journal of the International Menopause Society · 2025Review
- I'm still quite young: women's lived experience of precocious or premature menopause: a qualitative study among Egyptian women.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- Social Support and Its Influencing Factors Among Perimenopausal Women in Tianjin, China: A Community-Based Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Beyond the hot flashes: how machine learning is uncovering the complexity of menopause-related depression.CNS spectrums · 2025Article
- Cardiovascular Health During Menopause Transition: The Role of Traditional and Nontraditional Risk Factors.Methodist DeBakey cardiovascular journal · 2025Review
- Experiences of menopausal transition among populations exposed to chronic psychosocial stress in the United States: a scoping review.BMC women's health · 2024Article
- Does everyday discrimination account for the increased risk of vasomotor symptoms in Black women?: the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN).Menopause (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- The Relationship between Social Support and Mental Health Problems of Peri- and Postmenopausal Women during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- How does the British public understand mental health? A qualitative analysis of open-text responses.The International journal of social psychiatry · 2022Article
- Menstruation and menopause in autistic adults: Periods of importance?Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2022Article
- Article
- Does Obesity Aggravate Climacteric Symptoms in Postmenopausal Women?Revista brasileira de ginecologia e obstetricia : revista da Federacao Brasileira das Sociedades de Ginecologia e Obstetricia · 2022Article
- Is cognitive behaviour therapy an effective option for women who have troublesome menopausal symptoms?British journal of health psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many women going through the menopausal transition experience vasomotor symptoms (VMS), and research has shown that there is a large amount of variation in their frequency and severity. Many lifestyle factors have been found to co-vary with VMS, including the level of social support received by the woman, and how stressed she is. Stress is well documented to worsen menopause symptoms, and there is some evidence that support eases them; however, there is little research into whether support is an effective buffer against the negative effects of stress on VMS. Using nine years of data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (n = 2718), we use multilevel Poisson regression with random effects to test: 1) if more social support is associated with decreased VMS frequency, 2) if increased life stress worsens VMS, and 3) if support acts as a buffer against stress. After adjusting for age, marital status, smoking, self-perceived overall health, ethnicity, and menopausal status, we find that stress increases the frequency of VMS. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find strong evidence that emotional support led to lower VMS frequency, or that support buffers against the effects of stress. Experience of a stressful event, but not amount of social support, was included in the best fitting model; with the degree to which the woman was upset by the life stressor having the largest effect on menopause symptoms. Here, women who said they were currently upset by a stressful event experienced 21% more VMS than women who had experienced no life stressor. This research highlights that social factors may impact the menopausal transition.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.