Survey study, 2018
How many university students have menstrual problems, and is stress related to them?
91% of the students studied had some kind of menstrual problem. Stress was clearly linked to worse menstrual problems, including pain, absent periods, and premenstrual symptoms. This is a large study but cannot prove stress causes the problems.
What they did
Cross-sectional study of 738 female health science students aged 18-25 at a university in Saudi Arabia conducted between February 2015 and February 2016. Students completed questionnaires about menstrual problems and stress levels.
What they found
91% of students had some menstrual problem. The most common were period pain at 89.7% and premenstrual symptoms at 46.7%. Other problems included irregular periods (27%), abnormal bleeding (9.3%), absent periods (9.2%), and heavy periods (3.4%). 39% of students had high perceived stress. Students with high stress had 4 times higher odds of absent periods, 2 times higher odds of period pain, and 2.8 times higher odds of premenstrual symptoms.
What it means for you
Most university students in this study had menstrual problems, and stress was strongly linked to them. However, this is observational data, so we cannot know if stress causes the problems, if menstrual problems cause stress, or if other factors like sleep or nutrition affect both.
738
participants
91%
had some menstrual problem
89.7%
had period pain
About the study
- Original title
- Prevalence of menstrual problems and their association with psychological stress in young female students studying health sciences
- Authors
- Rafique N, Al-Sheikh MH
- Journal
- Saudi medical journal
- Year
- 2018
- Study design
- Survey study
- What was tested
- None
- Open access
- Yes
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.15537/smj.2018.1.21438
Topics
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