The effects of psychological interventions on menopausal hot flashes: A systematic review

Menopause is a normal physiological phenomenon, closely identified with a great deal of physical-psychological symptoms, including hot flashes (HFs) with a prevalence rate of 20-80%. Various pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions have been thus far practiced to reduce this common symptom of the menopausal transition.

This systematic review was conducted to evaluate the effects of psychological interventions on menopausal HFs.

In this review, the databases of Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, the Cochrane Library, and Scientific Information Database were searched applying the Boolean searching operators as well as the keywords of ‘hot flashes’, ‘menopause’, ‘psychological intervention’, and ‘vasomotor symptoms’. Accordingly, a total number of 20,847 articles published from January 2000 to June 2019 were retrieved. After excluding the duplicate and irrelevant ones, the risk of bias of 19 clinical or quasi-experimental clinical trials was assessed using the Cochrane collaboration tool.

The interventions implemented in the studies on menopausal HFs included cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, hypnotherapy, and relaxation techniques. All of the articles reported improvements in HFs in postmenopausal women, except for 4 studies.

Based on the findings of this systematic review, psychological interventions, especially cognitive behavioral therapy and relaxation techniques, are potentially effective for vasomotor symptoms and HFs in healthy postmenopausal women, although the quality of published research on this topic is sometimes questionable.