In the lab, we’ve all heard the horror stories: Women in its grip hitting their boyfriends over the head with frying pans, rear-ending their children’s teachers’ cars in the school parking lot. “At its worst, it’s led women to self-destructive acts. Megan Abbott’s latest novel Give Me Your Hand centres on a group of researchers convinced not only that PMDD exists, but that uncovering its mechanisms will make them famous. There’s also been criticism of the links between DSM subcommittee members and pharmaceutical companies amid concerns that PMS/PMDD will be pathologised and over-medicalised for profit.īut there is now a growing recognition of PMDD, and the mixed attitudes surrounding it, in popular culture. Some sceptics are nervous about attaching another label to women that presents them as irrational. PMDD is so murky partly because women’s health is understudied. The disorder was only included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013, after plenty of debate. “PMDD is ultimately a cellular genetic malfunction in response to hormone changes, and it should be treated as the serious medical condition that it is,” says Tory Eisenlohr-Moul, who studies women’s mental health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.īut a lack of consensus and knowledge around symptoms, whether they’re biologically, psychologically or culturally rooted, leads to PMDD being commonly misdiagnosed. And research published in 2017 also found unusual gene expression in people with PMDD that makes them unusually sensitive to oestrogen and progesterone. Various studies have indicated that PMS, the symptoms some women get in the week or two before their period, is at least partially influenced by genetics and can be passed on from mothers to their daughters. It can make them more anxious and irritable at certain points but also improve their spatial awareness and communication skills. The menstrual cycle can affect the brain in both positive and negative ways as women’s hormones fluctuate. The disorder can be so debilitating that 15% of those with PMDD have attempted suicide, and some young women affected are opting for hysterectomies. PMDD is much more intense than its better-known relative, PMS, with physical symptoms including fatigue and migraines, while the psychological symptoms can include the severe mood swings and anxiety that plagued Henaghan. The effect of childbirth no-one talks about.How the menstrual cycle changes women’s brains.Through her online study, she learned about a condition called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Henaghan had to do what many women overlooked by the medical establishment do: her own research. My wife gets that.”īut it wasn’t “just” premenstrual syndrome (PMS). She visited five GPs, all male, after the first one commented: “Oh, it’s just PMS. Eventually, after what she calls a “mini-breakdown”, she realised that the recurrence of all these symptoms was linked to her menstrual cycle. For instance, she might spend two weeks each month putting right the damage from the previous week: the fights with loved ones, the untidy home, the slippages at work. She thought it might be bipolar disorder, given the cyclical nature of her ups and downs. Her family noticed her increasingly strange behaviour as well. Henaghan would get bloated and fatigued, sleep excessively, and – as a keen gardener – shop erratically, for instance buying plants that were out of season. Though the psychiatric symptoms were the strongest, there were odd physical patterns as well. “It would be a case of if I could go to sleep and never wake up. But she did fantasise about leaving things behind. “I would essentially do a disappearing act so I wouldn’t have to be around people,” she says. She woke up each morning with enormous anxiety, leading to social withdrawal. “It felt like getting on a hamster wheel and not being able to get off,” she recalls.Įventually work got to be too much and she took an uncharacteristic short leave of absence. She was working for the UK’s Home Office while training to be a barrister, and wondered if the frequent stress and anxiety she was experiencing were just products of overwork and getting older. As a 30-year-old, Caroline Henaghan was busy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |