What science says about periods and mental health

PMS, food cravings, and “period cramps”: Anyone who menstruates knows from experience that your monthly cycle can have a huge impact on your body and mind. But researchers are only just beginning to examine exactly how menstruation affects health and may worsen symptoms of disease in some people.

In one recent study, psychologist Jaclyn Ross and her team at the University of Illinois at Chicago asked 119 female patients who had previously experienced suicidal thoughts to track their emotions during their menstrual cycles. Researchers found that in many patients, suicidal thoughts tended to worsen just before and during menstruation. At the time, patients were more likely to progress from contemplating suicide to actually making plans to end their own lives.

These results are sadly surprising to people living with depression who have spent years talking to their therapists, and among themselves, about how menstruation affects their symptoms. It may seem that it is not. However, thanks to misogyny in science and medicine, these effects have not been systematically studied until recently, leaving patients to cope on their own with mood swings that doctors may not know how to diagnose or treat. It is often necessary to.

In fact, menstruation has not been studied for decades, creating a lack of knowledge and causing patients with pain and heavy bleeding to wait years for a diagnosis. But in recent years, more scientists have begun studying the process and menstrual fluid, and this research could reveal important information about human health that has been unfairly ignored.

Menstruation can affect mental health symptoms

Roth's colleague, psychologist Tori Eisenlohr Mohr, told the Chicago Tribune that she got the idea for the study after one of her therapy patients mentioned worsening symptoms around her period. Ta. “I thought if we had evidence that this was common, we might be able to do something,” she said.

The relationship between menstruation and mental health has begun to receive more attention in the past decade. Clinicians have long known that a minority of the population experiences a condition called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), which is characterized by severe anxiety, depression, or irritability before menstruation. Ta. PMDD was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013, and experts believe that between 3 and 8 percent of menstruating people have this condition.

But Ross and her team wanted to study whether the menstrual cycle also affects the mental health of a wider population.

In other words, the patients in their study were selected not because they had been diagnosed with PMDD, but because they had reported suicidal thoughts in the past month. Researchers asked participants to record symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and hopelessness each day of their menstrual cycle. Participants were also asked about suicidal thoughts and plans. Ross told the Tribune that on the days around menstruation, ideas tend to be more focused and easier to plan.

“Interestingly, even though we did not recruit for PMDD, the majority of participants who reported recent suicidal ideation tended to experience worsening of symptoms in the days before and during menstruation. “There is,” she told Vox via email.

Most people don't experience significant psychiatric symptoms in response to hormonal changes, Ross said. However, research shows that people with underlying mental illnesses, including 60% of women with depressive disorders, often feel sick before their period.

Ross's research, published in December in the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that therapists, psychiatrists, and gynecologists are wondering how menstruation can affect emotional symptoms, especially suicidality. This suggests the need to provide information to patients about the It may also be beneficial for patients to chart their symptoms over a period of several months to see if a cyclical pattern emerges.

Roth's lab, led by Eisenlohr Mohr, is also investigating behavioral and pharmacological treatments that can help people whose symptoms are linked to the menstrual cycle, from dialectical behavioral therapy to hormone blockers.

Researchers are fighting the stigma surrounding periods

The discovery has new implications for a field of research that continues to combat silence and prejudice. People with PMDD still have a hard time getting a diagnosis. In a 2022 survey, about 40% of people with PMDD said their mental health care provider knew nothing about the condition. The impact of menstruation on other mental health conditions, such as depression, is even less understood.

However, more and more studies and reports are revealing how menstruation works and the many serious effects it has on our mental and physical health.

Researchers are also exploring the possibility of using menstrual fluid for early detection of diseases such as uterine fibroids, cancer, and endometriosis. Studying menstruation, when the uterus sheds and regrows its own lining, could provide insight into wound healing, says midwife and author Leah Hazzard in Vox's Bird Pin. told Mr. Carton.

Over the past two years, researchers also confirmed what many patients have reported anecdotally: that coronavirus vaccines have a small but measurable effect on menstrual cycles. The findings could prompt vaccine makers to test their products for their effects on menstruation so that patients are not caught by surprise. (Experts say the effects of coronavirus vaccines on menstruation are temporary and do not affect fertility.)

Many of the connections between menstruation and other aspects of physical and mental health went undiscussed for years, at least in public, because scientists and doctors simply didn't study them. Alice Le Carrigan, a pediatrics resident at Boston Children's Hospital who studies menstruation, previously told Vox that “we're very behind” in terms of his understanding of menstrual health.

In 2023, yes, last year, researchers finally conducted one of the first studies to test the capacity of menstrual products using real blood.

But research like Ross's shows us what many people who menstruate already know: that the menstrual process is an inseparable part of human functioning, and that it has much to teach us if we only listen. This shows that clinical research is starting to catch up.

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