Group Counseling Interventions for Premenstrual Syndrome

Abstract

Approximately 90 percent of women experience one symptom of PMS (Hsiao et al., 2002) and theses symptoms affect women’s relationships with their family, work environment and society. This research aims to assess the significance of cognitive behavioral treatment in reducing symptoms of PMS. This study is a semi-experimental one which comprises two groups named test and control. During the research, pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups obtained by two PMS tests were compared and analyzed using covariance analysis. The results revealed that cognitive-behavioral approach has an effect on psychic and physical components of PMS among female personnel of Iran University of Science and Technology.

Keywords: cognitive-behavioral approach, premenstrual syndrome, symptom, women;

1. Introduction

Perhaps there is not an experience like menstrual cycle to affect whole a woman’s psychological and physical structure deeply. This “different quality of feminine life” has an enormous influence upon her feeling of identity and being a woman and obviously the way she deals with these fundamental changes plays an extremely important role in woman’s healthiness. Menstruation has a crucial role in keeping life balance like other body functions such as digestion, blood circulation, excretion etc. and changes in its quality may affect woman’s mental and physical condition differently. PMS symptoms such as changes and disorders in woman’s mood and emotional conditions are absolutely critical since temperament status influences which method the person chooses for his/her lifestyle. Emotions are represented in human’s heart, words and body. Even it has effects on the way a person judges in different situations. Hence, PMS can be interpreted as a temperamental disorder that might be influential on some aspects of person’s cognition. (Eysenk et al., 2005). Since many of the hygienic diseases and problems impact human’s psychic health, it’s inevitable to adopt psychic-biologic models in the context of women’s mental and physical health because females are more likely to develop temperamental disorders (Sadock et al., 2003).

Blake, Salkovskis and Gath (1998) have described CBT method for curing PMS. They believe that women who suffer from PMS might interpret psychological incidents in a negative manner. Applying CBT method makes women find more adapting ways with premenstrual changes (Connolly, 2001). Therefore, pre wisdom of PMS that causes psychic and physical disorders could reduce many of the individual, family and social problems and be helpful in promoting people’s mental health.

This research aims to evaluate how cognitive-behavioral approach decreases symptoms of the syndrome.

2. Method

3. Results

According to the above table, the average score of the two groups for pre-test and post-test in PMS questionnaire (Physical and mental symptoms) has declined. This phenomenon in test group might be as a result of applying cognitivebehavioural method showing a reduction in both physical and mental symptoms.

The calculated F indicator for Cognitive-behavioral therapy (f=113.24) in table 2 is more than critical Value of F with a degree of freedom equal to 1 and 27 regarding 5% percent (4.21%) error. So, with the 95% certainty zero hypotheses claiming that there is no difference between scores of the two groups is rejected. Based on table 16-4 the average score of

test group for post-test (26.41) is less than the average score of control group for post-test which shows that cognitive-

behavioural method decreases PMS symptoms.

4. Discussion

According to above mentioned results, it’s concluded that group cognitive-behavioural therapy has positive effects onrelieving PMS symptoms and has caused changes like reduction of stress, anxiety and depression, increase of interest to routine activities such as job and friends, decrease of anger and increase of performance in suffering persons. Furthermore, cognitive-behavioural therapy trains persons to be responsible for their problems and difficulties, change their upsetting emotional and status by changing their beliefs, values and philosophies to a new deep belief system.

Findings of this research are in agreement with study done by Ng and Panay (2005) that surveys the relative impact of Fluoxetin and cognitive-behavioural therapy and compound method (CBT and Fluoxetin) on women who suffer from premenstrual disorders. Panay reached to the conclusion that compound method is effective on PMS which is in line with Kirkby’s findings (1994). Kirkby concluded that training interactive cognitive-behavioral skills could decrease negative outcomes of PMS symptoms.

Anxiety is one of the most widespread symptoms of PMS and results obtained from this study demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral therapy reduces premenstrual anxiety. Findings of this research are in agreement with study done by Picone and Kirkby (1990) in which the relationship between anxiety and PMS was examined.

Another obvious symptom of PMS is irritability which might be declined by cognitive-behavioral therapy used in this study. The obtained results are consistent with the research done by Choi and Salmon (1995) who argued the tendency to stress in active and inactive women and found that menstrual cycle has an effect on cardiac system of the body and emotional states. On the other hand, results of the present research are not supported by study done by Bergant et al., (1998) that showed emotional disorders like anger and anxiety have less impact on PMS.

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