| Sumario: | Purpose Menopause is an important watershed for women when they enter the old age. It causes negative effects on women's mental and physical conditions especially when menopausal symptoms are not treated properly. Due to the possible side effects of traditional estrogen, many menopausal women use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to relieve the discomfort caused by menopausal symptoms. This study intervenes a woman who has menopausal symptoms with CAM and assists her in terms of health management with transtheoretical model in hopes to ease her menopausal symptoms (Greene, 2008). Method This study aims to apply the transtheoretical model of the process of change and strategies to help women with menopausal syndrome to establish and maintain confidence in their self-health management at different stages of the process of change. Furthermore, we assist the case with a combination of CAM suitable for the case, such as exercise, diet, meditation, music, aromatherapy and lifestyle adjustment. In addition to the self-perception assessment by the case and researchers, we show the reduction of women's menopausal symptoms using the following four assessments including Greene's Climacteric Scale (Greene, 2008), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Tsai et al., 2005), Beck Depression Inventory ( Beck et al., 1996), and Self-rated Abilities for Health Practice Scale (Becker et al., 1993) before and after the study. Results and Discussion First, the strategies and measures of the transtheoretical models can help menopausal women strengthen self-efficacy and implement self-health management. The case's overall the self-rated abilities for health practice scale increased by 11 points. Among all items, the wellbeing dimension score increased from 7 to 12 points and the nutrition dimension from 8 to 13 points. Second, the application of CAM can relieve women's menopausal symptoms. Case A states that aromatherapy improved her nighttime sleep quality which has previously been worsened due to women's menopausal syndrome, and that regular exercise reduced her tendency towards depression. The significance of the case's improvement in wellness is also proved by the fact that her test result of the Greene's Climacteric Scale dropped from 31 to 11, and that her Beck Depression Inventory test result dropped from 29 to 10.
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