“Tomorrow, I’ll Be Fine”: Impacts and coping mechanisms in adolescents and young adults with primary dysmenorrhoea

Abstract

Aims: To understand the experiences of adolescents and young adults with primary dysmenorrhoea through the lens of structured frameworks extant in contemporary pain literature. Design: Descriptive qualitative study. Methods: Thirty-nine adolescents and young adults (ages 16-24 years) with primary dysmenorrhoea participated in semi-structured in-person interviews. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using deductive thematic analysis from November 2018 to April 2019. Results: Two overarching themes, each with subthemes, were identified. The first theme, primary dysmenorrhoea impacts the whole person, contained the following subthemes: biological, social, and psychological. The second theme, coping mechanisms of women with primary dysmenorrhoea, contained the following subthemes: primary, secondary, and passive coping. Conclusion: Women experience several primary dysmenorrhoea-related impacts on their biological, social, and psychological functioning. Women employ a variety of coping mechanisms to manage their primary dysmenorrhoea pain. Impact: This study emphasizes the significant effects of primary dysmenorrhoea on nearly every aspect of women's lives and contributes to an understanding of the ways women cope with this pain. The findings of this study underscore the need for continued consideration of primary dysmenorrhoea as a debilitating pain process as well as the need for additional interventions to help women manage this condition.

Experiences of menstruation in high income countries: A systematic review, qualitative evidence synthesis and comparison to low- and middle-income countries

“…143,56]. In general, emotionally supportive mothers were appreciated by participants [32,34,38,43,47,60,61,64,79,81,96,106,114,127,135,144] and emotionally unsupportive mothers criticised [8,32,38,49,56,63,64,70,81,96,106,107,109,110,119,128]. Several participants specifically stated that they had received neither positive nor negative support; their mother dealt with menarche matter-of-factly and it was rarely mentioned afterwards.…”

“…In the early to mid-20 th C this was often due to external behavioural expectations (or outright sanctions imposed by mothers) that they would not participate [36, 41, 45, 50, 56, 63, 65, 71, 93-95, 106, 108, 116] or a lack of appropriate menstrual materials for the particular activity, for example where tampons for swimming were not yet available, the participant chose not to use them, or the participant was not allowed to use them [32,38,56,95,109,112]. In recent decades abstention from physical activity was more commonly due to study participants choosing not to engage due to physical menstrual symptoms [34,40,51,77,80,87,99,127]. There were also participants who did partake in physical PLOS ONE activity during menstruation but worried that during this participation their menstrual status would be revealed [8,27,38,49,54,56,81,106,108].…”

“…Some individuals were not allowed to participate in religious practices whilst menstruating (within this review examples were given from those practicing Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam) [8,60,63,67,86,92,120], and some religions prohibited menstrual sex [67,86,105]. Where adolescent participants missed education during menstruation it was normally due to pain [8,32,34,49,56,58,61,64,65,71,80,87,99,103,122,127,129]. Many participants did not engage socially during menstruation [34,36,40,41,48,58,61,71,72,80,81,87,92,94,95,99,112,119,122,129,…”

“…Where adolescent participants missed education during menstruation it was normally due to pain [8,32,34,49,56,58,61,64,65,71,80,87,99,103,122,127,129]. Many participants did not engage socially during menstruation [34,36,40,41,48,58,61,71,72,80,81,87,92,94,95,99,112,119,122,129,135]; some were not allowed to (normally by mothers) [36,38,41,45,65,71,72,[92][93][94]119]. Those who reached menarche in the early-mid 20 th C were often instructed not to inte...…”

The Establishment of a Mouse Model of Recurrent Primary Dysmenorrhea

“…In recent years, many studies have been carried out focusing on the pathological mechanism of PD and tried to develop more drugs for PD treatment [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. One acknowledged mechanism is that the overproduction of uterine PGs causes myometrial hypercontractility, resulting in ischemia and hypoxia of the uterine muscle and pain [ 2 , 4 ].…”