Stressful life events during the perimenopause: longitudinal observations from the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study

Abstract Background Midlife is a time of increased responsibilities for women who have multiple roles including taking care of children, caring for elderly parents, managing households, and working outside the home. With little time for themselves, women additionally experience stressful life events. The purpose of this study was to describe the longitudinal patterns of stressful life events of women during midlife including socio-economic factors and demographic characteristics associated with them.Methods Women who were part of the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study (SMWHS), a longitudinal study spanning more than 23 years, who had stressful life events measured at baseline and at years 2, 7, and 10 were included in these analyses. The Life Event Scale, a 70-item scale based on a yes/no response and a Likert-based scoring system with 0 (no effect) to 4 (large effect), was used to determine the total and impact scores of midlife women. The LES was adapted to midlife women from the Norbeck Scale for younger, pregnant women. Analytic strategies consisted of a latent-class growth mixture module to examine subgroups of women with similar exposure to stressful life events using socio-economic factors (gross family income, education, race/ethnicity, employment) and demographic variables (age, marital status, being a parent, and menopausal transition stage) to differentiate trajectories over time.Results Women’s experience of total scores for undesirable stressful life events decreased over time; the impact was sustained over time (65% of the women) or sharply decreased (35% of the women). Women’s experience of total scores for desirable stressful life events were mostly medium high sustainers (61%) compared to high sustainers (27.3%). The impact of desirable stressful life events mostly decreased over time (92.5%). Menopausal transition stages were not significant predictors of stressful life events.Conclusion Midlife women experience stressful life events throughout the menopausal transition. Since the stages were not significant predictors of the ratings of SLEs, a more complex reason, more than biological and including social, may explain the ratings of the women over the course of this ten-year observational study.