Survey study, 1975
Do women with premenstrual mood symptoms have more mood disorder diagnoses?
Yes, women reporting premenstrual affective symptoms were more likely than others to seek psychiatric care and receive a mood disorder diagnosis. We cannot be sure of cause and effect from this type of study.
What they did
Cross-sectional study of 874 freshmen and sophomore university women. A questionnaire about premenstrual and menstrual symptoms was sent to all of them. Researchers compared those reporting premenstrual affective symptoms to those who did not, and looked at their psychiatric care seeking and mood disorder diagnoses.
What they found
Women reporting premenstrual affective symptoms were more likely than those who did not report them to seek psychiatric care at the Student Health Service and to be diagnosed as having an affective disorder at the service.
What it means for you
Women with PMS mood symptoms may be more likely to have an underlying mood disorder, but this study doesn't tell us if PMS causes the mood problem or if they occur separately. The main limitation is that it is cross-sectional, taking only a snapshot in time without proving cause and effect.
874
women surveyed
64%
response rate
About the study
- Original title
- Premenstrual affective syndrome and affective disorder
- Authors
- Wetzel RD, Reich T, McClure JN Jr et al.
- Journal
- The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science
- Year
- 1975
- Study design
- Survey study
- Participants
- 874
- What was tested
- None; this was observational research
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1192/bjp.127.3.219
Topics
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