Article Abstract

Menstrual cycle is the highest mark of womenhood in a girl life. The journey of becoming a woman from a girl is defined by the process of menstrual cycle. The onset of menstrual cycle is known as Menarche. It is the most significant incident of a girl’s life. Menarche brings about a lot of physical, mental, psychological modification in a girl. This report tries to find out the inevitable changes of the girl at their menarche. A crosssectional study was conducted on 150 adolescent girls aged between 11 - 16 of class 8-10 from the district of South 24-Pargana of West Bengal. Data were collected in the form of close-ended questionnaire. The mean age of the girls to have their menarche is found to be 13.1. Mean weight and mean height of the girls are 43.75 kg and 153.12 cm respectively. The BMI index shows that 64% girls have normal body weight, 24.66% are underweight while 11.35% are overweight. The report also find out the impact of menarche on the physiological, psychological, psychosocial life of the adolescent girls. The state of menstrual health as in the amount and duration of menstrual bleeding viz. scanty mild blood flow, normal moderate blood flow, prolonged heavy blood flow, degree of pain viz. moderate, severe or no pain during dysmenorrhea or period cramps, need of sanitary napkins in those days, all these parameters are studied in this report. Effect of socioeconomic status, role of social barriers, taboos and stigmas, like prohibition of entering temples, restriction on foods during periods, that create guilt, frustration, anxiety and many more physiological problems, are addressed in this paper.
Keywords: Adolescent, Dysmenorrhea, Menarche, Menstrual Bleeding, Social Barriers, Taboos