Social pathways to premenstrual symptoms

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore feminine and menstrual socialization, expectations about experiencing symptoms, and the stressful nature of women's lives among women with three perimenstrual symptom patterns. Social learning and stress theory provided a theoretical framework for understanding why some menstruating women experience premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual magnification symptom patterns. Data about socialization, stressful life context, expectations about symptoms, depressed mood, and other health-related and demographic indicators were obtained from an interview. Subsequent daily recordings in a health diary for two or more menstrual cycles provided data with which to classify women's symptoms across the menstrual cycle as a low severity symptom (LS, n = 73), premenstrual syndrome (PMS, n = 36), or premenstrual magnification (PMM, n = 62) pattern. Stepwise discriminant function analysis demonstrated that stressful life context, menstrual socialization, and expectations about symptoms related to menstruation differentiated women with an LS from those with a PMS or PMM symptom pattern. In addition, depressed mood differentiated the three groups.

Mood and the Menstrual Cycle

“…Very few of the participants’ periodograms showed any evidence of cyclicity with the 24–32 day periodicity that would implicate the MC. These results provide further evidence for the contention by Woods et al [24,39] and Angst et al [40] of a perimenstrual rather than a premenstrual only mood exacerbation; they also challenge the ongoing usage of the term ‘premenstrual syndrome’. These results as a whole do not support commonly held beliefs about mood and the premenstruum.…”

“…Firstly, such knowledge shapes women’s own expectations about their health [21,22,23,24], and secondly, it can guide the development of theoretical models of mood and mood variability. The MiDL project used a novel data collection strategy, mental health telemetry [25], which uses real-time wireless networking to transmit self-report ratings from participants’ cell phones.…”

Psychosocial and lifestyle correlates of premenstrual symptoms among military women

“…Numerous studies show stress to affect both the reproductive axis and psychosocial functioning (8)(9)(10)(11). The strongest predictor of premenstrual symptoms in this study, job stress, was associated with an almost 3-fold risk of symptoms after controlling for all other variables.…”

“…Psychosocial variables, particularly depressive symptoms (2-6) have been strongly associated with premenstrual symptoms, leading some investigators to suggest that severe premenstrual symptoms may reflect an underlying depressive disorder (3,4). Perceived stress and physiological stress arousal have also been frequently associated with premenstrual symptoms (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). Lifestyle factors such as smoking (13,14), alcohol intake (7,15), physical activity (7), and working outside the home (16) have been associated with a variety of menstrual cycle problems.…”

Current update of hormonal and psychotropic drug treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder

“…The diagnosis is reinforced by the inclusion of patients with a history of depression, which ranges in study samples from approximately 16% in a recent large clinical trial [10•] to as high as 76% in older reports [11]. Although some women are primarily depressed during premenstrual periods, the high prevalence of depression among women with premenstrual distress may also be the result of the location of clinical studies, which is suggested by the wide range in reported frequency at study sites, or the result of including women with other disorders that worsen premenstrually, as suggested by some researchers [12].…”