If the menstrual cycle in women on their moods? For most women, PMS or "premenstrual syndrome" is a time when it is higher than normal period of changes in physical, mental and emotional work together to experience what people call "Mood Swings".
In 1970 came a vague group of physical and emotional symptoms associated with the days before menstruation, including fatigue, headaches, irritability and depression than expectedDisease and was given the label PMS.
The interesting question for psychologists is whether these changes with physical or mental emotional changes are related? Or if you simply myths are shaped by society.
The term PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is, is a medical condition that describes a chronic case of PMS, according to the Psychiatric Association.
In 1994, despite the objections of many psychologists, the American Psychiatric AssociationPMDD included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a reference manual for psychiatric diagnosis.
So what does the evidence show to reality? During PMS women experience certain physical symptoms, including cramps, breast tenderness and water retention, and, of course, these physical symptoms, some women feel grumpy or unhappy, such as pain, men may feel grumpy or unhappy. But the emotional symptoms associated with menstruation - especially irritabilityand depression are rare. In fact fewer than 5% of all women have such symptoms predictably over their cycles (source: Brooks-Gun Differentiating Premenstrual Symptoms and Syndromes. Psychosomatic medicine, 1986; Reid, R. L. 1991 Premenstrual syndrome. New England Journal of Medicine).
If the mood swings associated with PMS are so uncommon, then why do so many women think they have it? According to a Canadian psychology text; one of the reasons could be because women tend to notice the feelings of depression or irritability when these moods happen to occur premenstrually but overlook times when such moods are absent. Or may label symptoms that occur before a period as "PMS" and attribute the same symptoms at other times of the month to a stressful day or a low grade on an English paper. Cultural attitudes and myths about menstruation can also influence a woman's perceptions of her own emotional ups and downs.
Major findings from other psychological research and studies have concluded that:
No gender differences exists in mood.
No relation exists between stage of the menstrual cycle and emotional symptoms
No consistent "PMS" pattern exists across menstrual cycles.
These results are unknown to most people and have usually been ignored by doctors, therapists and the media. As a result, since the 1970s, premenstrual symptoms have come to be defined almost solely in medical and psychiatric terms.
So entrenched is the belief that most women suffer from PMS that those who publish reports questioning this belief are often accused of bias reporting.
