Assessment of knowledge and attitude towards menstrual cup usage among adolescent girls

Abstract

A woman is the essence of whole universe. If there would be no women, the human race is surely going to end. Women deserves more care and attention especially during the reproductive phase. Menstruation is a unique phenomenon of females of reproductive age group. Cultural, religious and traditional beliefs can lead to different restrictions that women face during their menstrual period. Menstrual cup is a device for menstrual flow management and is claimed to be a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional menstrual sanitary protections.Even though menstrual cup is highly efficient it requires fair amount of self-confidence and assurance to insert into one’s own body. And the prevailing myths on breakage of hymen make the confusion of adolescents even worse. This study was aimed at assessing knowledge and attitude towards menstrual cup usage among adolescent girls. Descriptive survey design was used. A total of 100 adolescent girls were selected using convenient quota sampling methods. Data was collected using structured knowledge questionnaire to assess knowledge and an attitude rating scale to assess attitude towards menstrual cup usage. The study results revealed that 50 % students had good knowledge, 35 % students had satisfactory knowledge, 8 % students had excellent knowledge, 6 % students had poor knowledge and one percent students had very poor knowledge about menstrual cup usage. Majority (81%) had a positive attitude towards menstrual cup usage, 19% had neutral attitude and none had negative attitude. Hence majority of the subjects had a good attitude towards menstrual cup usage. There was no relation between knowledge and attitude of adolescent girls towards menstrual cup usage. Women have lots of concerns about managing menstrual flow. Fear of spotting, stains, squishy, messy, smelling and annoying nature of sanitary pads is still a major dilemma. Other alternative measure to sanitary napkins is menstrual cup. Adolescent girls achieve their knowledge on menstrual cup through the social media.In a developing world, menstrual management is not only difficult but also may have serious adverse impact on the lives of women. Even when taboos are not a major problem, convenient or inexpensive menstrual collection materials are not available. Efforts to produce inexpensive materials are solely lacking. Women use clothes, absorbent pads or tampons to manage menstrual flow. Washing the clothes or disposing the pads hygienically is a challenge for most of the females. By interacting with other teens, investigators understood that women have lots of concerns about using sanitary pads. Other alternative measure to sanitary napkins is menstrual cup but females require self-confidence and assurance to insert it to one’s own body.