Evaluation and comparison of the effects of various cognitive-behavioral therapy methods on climacteric symptoms: A systematic review study

Abstract

Objective: Climacteric syndrome, which is related to many symptoms, often causes discomfort in women. Non-pharmacologic treatment isone of the treatment options for affected individuals, and this syndrome can be cured with psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioraltherapy (CBT). The present study aimed to compare the efficacy of various CBT methods on the improvement of climacteric symptoms.Material and Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, Medline, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched for relevant articles publishedbetween January 1990 and August 2018. Data extraction and quality assessment were conducted by two authors.Results: A total of 15 articles including 910 women were entered. We divided the CBT methods into two categories, face-to-face (individual andgroup CBT) and indirect (self-help CBT) methods. Among the three CBT approaches, three articles covered individual CBT, nine articles carriedout group CBT, and in five articles, the self-help approach was used. The climacteric symptoms that improved with CBT were categorized intothree groups as vasomotor symptoms, psychological symptoms, and organic disorders. Generally, the face-to-face method played a key positiveeffect on symptom improvement, and the group CBT approach was more effective on psychological symptoms.Conclusion: Although the indirect method is more cost-effective, it has less impact than the face-to-face method; it is better to use face-tofaceapproaches to achieve better results, if possible. Further studies are required in this regard, particularly in the individual and self-help CBTapproaches, to measure the impact of these approaches on more varied symptoms of menopause. (J Turk Ger Gynecol Assoc 2019; 20: 178-95)