Publication details
Krize středního věku u žen
| Title in English | Midlife crisis in women |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Česká a slovenská psychiatrie |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | link k full-textu Open Access na stránkách časopisu |
| Keywords | midlife crisis; middle age; crisis; women; life satisfaction |
| Description | Objective: Our research was focused on a deeper examination of the issue of midlife crisis in female population. The aim was to find out the level of awareness of this phenomenon among middle-aged women, their life satisfaction and values during this period. Furthermore, to explore what they consider to be the worst and best aspects of middle age, and to find out whether they managed to fulfill their life dream or goal in the course of their lives. Methods: A 16-item online questionnaire was created to carry out the research. The questionnaire was completed by 604 female respondents between the ages of 35 and 55, with mean age 44.0 ± 6.0 years. Married respondents were represented by an overwhelming majority of 346 (57.3 %), followed by 145 divorced women (24.0 %), 101 single women (16.7 %) and 12 widowed participants (2.0 %). Results: Almost 98 % of the research participants had heard of the term "midlife crisis" and had an idea of how such a crisis looks like. A total of 41.6 % of our female respondents (N = 251) observed some symptoms in themselves and stated that they suffered of a midlife crisis. On the contrary, 58.4 % of female respondents (N = 353) from the sample did not experience any symptoms of midlife crisis and, in their opinion were not going through a crisis. On the scale of life satisfaction from 1 (least) to 10 (most), most of the female respondents rated themselves by numbers 8 and 9, namely 25.5 % of female respondents (N = 154) ticked the value 8 and 22.7 % of female respondents (N = 137) ticked the value 9. The median of life satisfaction in the group of those who experienced midlife crisis was significantly lower than the median of the group of those who did not experience any crisis (7 vs. 8; U=61621; df=1, p<0.001). Conclusion: We found that awareness of the midlife crisis was very high among middle-aged women. More than two fifths of the women in our sample observed midlife crisis in themselves. As expected, a key finding of our study was that life satisfaction was significantly lower in women experiencing a midlife crisis than in women without a crisis. |