Mulher, menopausa e climatério: uma análise do discurso em periódicos de medicina

Abstract

The aim of this work is to make an analysis of biomedicine speech about woman in climacterium period starting from a research in medicine's journals, refering to socio-anthropological production about gender, body, aging,mental uneasiness and menopause. In modern occidental society it can be identified an incresing searching for explanations based on biology (such as neurochemical changes and hormonal rates) to human suffering, in loss of personal, social and historical context influences of each individual. Such explanations include not only physical and psychical illness, but many times human being's own daily lives. This research revealed a women image very fragile and vulnerable in climacterium period, exposed not only to a typical symptomatology from this period (flames, isomnia, anxiety and depression), but also serious patologies. Women's encreasingly definition as from her hormonal rates has been reinforcing in biomedical speech by HRT (hormonal replacemnt therapy) to treat physical and psychcal sintomatology that is associated to this period, as well as osteoporosis prevention, urinary and cardiovascular problems. There some more relativiseble positions even inside medical field, nevertheless, biomedicine's speech still presents itself as hegemonic and encompassable, and in woman's in climacterium hormonal rates are, in last analyses, going to define how she is going to respondto her everyday changes.