Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:230-234
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
State-dependent alterations in the perception of life events in menstrual-related mood disorders
PJ Schmidt, GN Grover, MC Hoban and DR Rubinow
Unit on Peptide Studies, NIMH, Bethesda, MD 20205.
The authors examined the reporting of daily life events by women with
prospectively confirmed menstrual-related mood disorder (N = 40) and
asymptomatic control subjects (N = 20). During the follicular and late
luteal phases of the menstrual cycle, subjects completed a schedule of life
events that monitors an individual's perception of 1) the frequency of
occurrence of life events and 2) the degree of associated distress or
pleasure. The patient group reported significantly more negative life
events than the control group. Further, the patients with menstrual-related
mood disorder showed significantly more distress associated with the same
event when it occurred in the premenstrual phase than when it occurred in
the post-menstrual phase.
