The Need to Bleed: Women's Attitudes and Beliefs About Menstrual Suppression

Abstract

Advanced practice nurses play an important role in educating women about menstrual health. Clinicians can use this information to assess women's attitudes and beliefs about menstrual symptoms and to educate them about misconceptions. The FDA approved Seasonale in September 2003, the first dedicated OC created to reduce the number of menstrual cycles yearly. Women need to be educated about the pros and cons of suppression; some women will benefit from suppression, and others will consider it unnatural.

Opinion and experience of Brazilian women regarding menstrual bleeding and use of combined oral contraceptives

“…Nonetheless, for many women, monthly bleeding is a sign of health, fertility, and of not being pregnant; conversely, the absence of monthly bleeding is often believed to be linked to disease [2][3][4]. A large body of published evidence is gathering to suggest that monthly menstruation can be avoided without any deleterious effect to health [4][5][6].…”

Menstruation During a Lifespan: A Qualitative Study of Women's Experiences

“…Furthermore, there seems to be a correlation between severe menstrual pain, irregular menstrual cycles and heavy menstrual bleeding on the one hand and psychosocial stress on the other (Barnard, Frayne, Skinner & Sullivan, 2003;Yamamoto, 2009), which may result in a poorer health status (Barnard et al, 2003). Scholars indicate that women with a negative and bothersome experience of menstruation are more positive to menstrual suppression than women with more positive attitudes (Andrist, 2004;Johnston-Robledo, Ball, Lauta & Zekoll, 2003).…”

Women's experiences with tailored use of a combined oral contraceptive: a qualitative study

“…Previous studies have assessed women's attitudes toward, and knowledge about, extended use of COCPs (Den Tonkelaar and Oddens, 1999;Glasier et al, 2003Glasier et al, , 2008Andrist et al, 2004), but little research has examined their actual experiences of continuous use. Moreover, the few studies that have assessed women's experiences have been limited in scope and have most often used adherence to COCPs as a 'proxy' measure of satisfaction (Edelman et al, 2010).…”

“…While the acceptability of initiating, and continuing on, extended-use regimens has been reported as high, acceptability in these studies has been narrowly defined (usually as continuation), often established from retrospective reviews of medical records of women using extended COCP regimens (Sulak et al, 2002(Sulak et al, , 2004. There have also been many more studies of women's attitudes toward hypothetical use of extended-use pill regimes (Den Tonkelaar and Oddens, 1999;Glasier et al, 2003Glasier et al, , 2008Andrist et al, 2004) than of their actual use of continuous COCPs. In a Cochrane review of use of extendedcycle versus standard use of COCPs, the authors concluded that further research on women's satisfaction and menstrual-associated symptoms was needed (Edelman et al, 2010).…”