The Effect of Husbands' Education Regarding Menopausal Health on Marital Satisfaction of Their Wives

OBJECTIVES: Marital satisfaction has an important effect on people's mental health. Due to the increasing average age and life expectancy of Iranian women, obtaining knowledge about sexual aspects of post-menopause women for partners can improve their health and quality of life. This study aimed to determine the effect of education for the husbands regarding menopause on marital satisfaction of their wives. METHODS: This randomized controlled trial was conducted on 100 women aged 45 to 55 years old and their husbands in Yazd in 2014. Subjects were randomly assigned to intervention group (50 couples) and control group (50 couples). The data gathering tools included two questionnaires, the first one contained questions about demographic information of women and men, and the other one was used to assess knowledge and practice in men about menopause and Enrich marital satisfaction. The second questionnaire was applied twice; before intervention and two months after that. In the intervention group an educational program in the form of three 60-minute sessions were conducted using speech, but the control group received no training. Analysis was performed through the statistical SPSS software, paired t-test, t-test and chi-square. RESULTS: In the intervention group, two months after the educational program the knowledge of menopausal health and women's marital satisfaction scores increased significantly (P<0.001). But there was no significant difference in control group. CONCLUSIONS: Training menopausal health to husbands can increase women's marital satisfaction in the period of menopausal transition. Therefore, designing and implementing educational programs for husbands is recommended.

Online social support for patients with multiple sclerosis: a thematic analysis of messages posted to a virtual support community

Background: currently with the emergence of the Internet, patients have an opportunity to exchange social support online. However, little attention has been devoted to different dimensions of online social support exchanged in virtual support communities for patients with multiple sclerosis [MS]

Methods: to provide a rich insight, the aim of this qualitative study was to explore and categorize different dimensions of online social support in messages exchanged in a virtual support community for patients with MS. A total of 548 posted messages created during one year period were selected using purposive sampling to consider the maximum variation sampling. Prior-research-driven thematic analysis was then conducted. In this regard, we used the Cutruna and Suhr's coding system. The messages that could not be categorized with the used coding system were thematically analyzed to explore new additional social support themes

Results: the results showed that various forms of social support including informational, emotional, network, esteem and tangible support were exchanged. Moreover, new additional social support themes including sharing personal experiences, sharing coping strategies and spiritual support emerged in this virtual support community

Conclusion: the wide range of online social support exchanged in the virtual support community can be regarded as a supplementary source of social support for patients with MS. Future researches can examine online social support more comprehensively considering additional social support themes emerging in the present study