Women’s Attitudes Towards Menstruation and Their Associations With Well-Being: A Latent Profile Analysis

Over the lifetime, women develop attitudes toward menstruation, which can affect their physical and psychological well-being. Up to now, literature has poorly investigated the relationship between attitudes toward menstruation, specific variables potentially associated with these attitudes - such as women’s age, sources of information, level of education, use of hormonal contraceptives - and some indicators of well-being, such as body appreciation, self-esteem, and emotional regulation. This study aims to fill this gap. The main objective is to identify attitude toward menstruation profiles able to describe the heterogeneity of the sample and relate them to the variables and indicators of well-being mentioned above. A Latent Profile Analysis was performed on a sample of 452 women, aged 18 to 53, who filled out an online survey. Specifically, three different menstrual attitude patterns profiles were identified, namely predictable annoying event, predictable natural event and unpredictable and deniable event. The main findings show that age and having acquired knowledge from scientific sources contribute to the development of positive attitudes, which in turn are associated with higher levels of self-esteem and body appreciation. On the other hand, using hormonal contraceptives and relying on the Internet as a source of information about menstruation are linked to negative attitudes, which in turn are associated with reduced self-esteem and body appreciation, and greater emotional dysregulation.