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

Objective: The climacteric syndrome related to many symptoms often causes discomfort in women. Nonpharmacological treatment is one of the treatment options for these individuals, and this syndrome can be cured with psychological treatments such as CBT. The present study aimed to compare the efficacy of various CBT methods on the improvement of climacteric symptoms.

Materials and Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, Medline, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched for the relevant articles published within 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 and group CBT) and indirect (self-help CBT) methods. Among the three types of CBT approach, three articles pointed out individual CBT, nine articles carried out group CBT and in five articles, we could find the self-help approach. The climacteric symptoms improved by CBT were categorized into three groups of vasomotor symptoms, psychological symptoms, and organic disorder. Generally, the face-to-face method played a key positive effect on symptom improvement, and the group CBT approach was more effective on psychological symptoms.

Discussion: Although the indirect method is more cost-effective, it has less impact than the face-to-face method, and, it is better to utilize face-to-face approaches to achieve a better result, if possible. Further studies are required in this regard, particularly in the individual and self-help CBT approaches and will measure the impact of these approaches on more varied symptoms of menopause.