Impairment of Quality of Life (QoL) of menopausal women has often been demonstrated using condition-specific QoL instruments. However, condition-specific QoL data are of relatively limited usefulness in deciding whether treatments of proven efficacy such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) should be initiated in individual menopausal women. OBJECTIVES: This research examined the correlations of symptoms with the scores of a generic QoL instrument, the Psychological General Well-being Index (PGWBI). Correlations were also examined between menopausal symptoms and age. The subjects included 155 Italian menopausal women who were either on HRT for less than 12 months or were being considered for HRT. Menopausal symptoms were measured by Kupperman’s index. RESULTS: Kupperman’s index correlated significantly with the PGWBI global score ( r = 0.49; p <0.0001) and all six domains (r = 0.34 to 0.48; p <0.0001 for each). By contrast, Age was not correlated with the PGWBI global score (r = 0.11; p = 0.19) and PGWBI domains except Depression with which a weak but significant correlation was observed (r = 0.16 ; p = 0.05). Observed differences in correlation suggest that menopausal symptoms are a major factor of impairment of QoL of women independently of age. Though these findings confirm the well-known association between impairment of the emotional well-being and age, the latter did not reach significance and was less than the association with menopausal symptoms in this sample (r = 0.16 versus r = -0.47). CONCLUSION: These findings show that menopausal symptoms are associated with impairment of general and psychological well-being and QoL of women whereas age is not necessarily associated with decline in general QoL. Furthermore, severity of menopausal symptoms was found to be more important for the emotional well-being of women than age.