The 4th International Symposium on Women's Health and Menopause, organized by the Giovanni Lorenzini Medical Foundation (Milan, Italy and Houston, Texas) focused on the new strategies to improve the quality of life of post-menopausal women. This volume illustrates the findings of this conference and includes information on the age-related degenerative processes occurring after menopause including cardiovascular disease, cancer, fractures and dementia.
Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2014 in the subject Nursing Science - Miscellaneous, Florida International University, Modesto A. Maidique Campus (Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences), course: Nursing & Research, language: English, abstract: In light of the present-day obesity crisis, this study describes the impact of demographic, cognitive, behavioral, and biological factors on health outcomes in pre-menopausal and menopausal African American women living in rural South Carolina. The data suggests that obesity and related chronic diseases can be, in fact, curbed by a better-informed public, a shift in body-awareness and a deeper understanding of the sociocultural heritage and our relationship to food in general. As a groundbreaking study within this high-risk population, it also puts in perspective to what extent these factors are driven by the socioeconomic status of the women. The findings from this research place renewed urgency on interactive strategies in education and the healthcare field in order to better equip African American women in rural areas with the tools to confront obesity and related chronic diseases.
Though most research in the psychology of gender highlights the differences between females and males, this supplementary collection of readings also investigates how they are alike. With the aim of providing an accurate picture of gender, the authors have culled readings that not only explore commonalties between females and males, but also probe the unique ways that people of different races, ethnicities, social classes and sexual orientations experience gender. The result is a model that views gender in terms of thinking, feeling, and behaving as the result of a complex interplay among biological, psychological, social and cultural processes.
Multicultural Counseling and Psychotherapy, 6th ed, offers counseling students and professionals a distinctive lifespan approach that emphasizes the importance of social justice and diversity in mental health practice. Chapters include case studies, reflection questions, and examinations of current issues in the field. Each chapter also discusses the ways in which a broad range of factors—including sexuality, race, gender identity, and socioeconomic conditions—affect clients’ mental health, and gives students the information they need to best serve clients from diverse backgrounds.
Emotional, as well as physical distress, is a heritage from our hominid ancestors; it has been experienced by every group of human beings since our emergence as a species. And every known culture has developed systems of conceptualization and intervention for addressing it. The editors have brought together leading psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and others to consider the interaction of psychosocial, biological, and cultural variables as they influence the assessment of health and illness and the course of therapy. The volume includes broadly conceived theoretical and survey chapters; detailed descriptions of specific healing traditions in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and the Arab world. The Handbook of Culture, Therapy, and Healing is a unique resource, containing information about Western therapies practiced in non-Western cultures, non-Western therapies practiced both in their own context and in the West.
Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American medical and political accounts of female middle age to challenge Western assumptions about menopause. She uses ethnography, interviews, statistics, historical and popular culture materials, and medical publications to produce a richly detailed account of Japanese women's lives. The result offers irrefutable evidence that the experience and meanings—even the endocrinological changes—associated with female midlife are far from universal. Rather, Lock argues, they are the product of an ongoing dialectic between culture and local biologies. Japanese focus on middle-aged women as family members, and particularly as caretakers of elderly relatives. They attach relatively little importance to the end of menstruation, seeing it as a natural part of the aging process and not a diseaselike state heralding physical decline and emotional instability. Even the symptoms of midlife are different: Japanese women report few hot flashes, for example, but complain frequently of stiff shoulders. Articulate, passionate, and carefully documented, Lock's study systematically undoes the many preconceptions about aging women in two distinct cultural settings. Because it is rooted in the everyday lives of Japanese women, it also provides an excellent entree to Japanese society as a whole. Aging and menopause are subjects that have been closeted behind our myths, fears, and misconceptions. Margaret Lock's cross-cultural perspective gives us a critical new lens through which to examine our assumptions.
There is no doubt that daily habits and actions exert a profound health impact. The fact that nutritional practices, level of physical activity, weight management, and other behaviors play key roles both in the prevention and treatment of most metabolic diseases has been recognized by their incorporation into virtually every evidence-based medical guideline. Despite this widespread recognition, physicians and other healthcare workers often cannot find a definitive and comprehensive source of information on all of these areas. Designed for physicians and other health care workers, Lifestyle Medicine, Second Edition brings together evidence-based research in multiple health-related fields to assist practitioners both in treating disease and promoting good health. Sections cover nutrition and exercise, behavioral psychology, public policy, and management of a range of disorders, including cardiovascular disease, endocrine and metabolic dysfunction, obesity, cancer, immunology and infectious diseases, pulmonary disorders, and many more.
From Menarche to Menopause: The Female Body in Feminist Therapy examines the latest research on the menstrual cycle and women’s reproductive health. This timely volume focuses on women in therapy who are disconnected from—or even repelled by—their own bodies due to cultural attitudes, abuse, trauma, or the natural aging process. Experts in the fields of psychology and women’s health unite to celebrate the physical life stages of women and girls and to offer practical advice for therapists to use when addressing negativity caused by appearance, age, menstrual symptoms, or reproductive concerns. In this book, you will gain new understanding about the effects on a woman’s mental health that transitional life stages can cause, from preadolescence through the childbearing years to menopause. The suggestions in From Menarche to Menopause can help women resist the bombardment of negative messages and misleading information they receive about their bodies and their reproductive concerns. This helpful resource can also assist you in opening new lines of communication between mothers and daughter, women and men, and women and other women. From Menarche to Menopause discusses how to handle topics such as: self-loathing caused by media and cultural messages that affect women’s acceptance of their bodies overcoming a daughter’s reluctance to discuss sensitive topics of bodily maturation, menstruation, and emerging sexual development helping women, men, and couples cope with infertility assisting women in overcoming a disappointing birth experience providing therapeutic care to women and couples who experience perinatal loss addressing perimenopause in midlife women and the concerns, negative attitudes, and uncertainty of this transition This unique book fills the gap in feminist therapy literature with practical advice concerning the functions of women’s bodies that can be used within the therapy context. From Menarche to Menopause includes extensive references and several book reviews to further your research and provide reading and other resources you can recommend to your clients. This practical resource on women’s reproductive health—as it relates to mental health—is an important addition to the bookshelves of feminist psychologists, clinical practitioners, social workers, and health practitioners as well as faculty and students of these disciplines.
From the stone age to the cyber age, women and men have experienced the world differently. Out of a cosmos of goddesses and she-devils, earth mothers and madonnas, witches and queens, saints and whores, a vast body of women's folklore has come into bloom. International in scope and drawing on more than 130 expert contributors, this encyclopedia reviews the myths, traditions, and beliefs central to women's daily lives. More than 260 alphabetically arranged entries cover the lore of women across time, space, and life. Students of history, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, literature, and world cultures will value this encyclopedia as an indispensable guide to women's folklore. In addition, there are entries on women's folklore and folklife in 15 regions of the world, such as the Caribbean, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Entries provide cross-references and cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected bibliography of print and electronic resources. Students learning about history, world cultures, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, and literature will welcome this companion to the daily life of women across time and continents.
