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Abstract
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Why Would We Think That Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Planning, and Affective Symptoms Would Be Related to Menstrual Cycle Phase?
Almost 180 years ago, von Feuchtersleben noted that "the menses in sensitive women is almost always attended by mental uneasiness, irritability, or sadness" (2). This observation helped introduce two critical ideas: the menstrual cycle (and not the uterus, as per Hippocrates) could be a modulator of behavior, and some factor(s) generated susceptibility to increase the likelihood of behavioral disturbance in a menstrual cycle phase-related fashion.
Interest in the first idea--menstrual cycle as a modulator of behavior--was advanced by Robert Frank's description of the premenstrual tension syndrome in 1931 (3). By the time Greene and Dalton's article "The Premenstrual Syndrome" was published in 1953 (4), well over 100 symptoms had been reported as part of the premenstrual syndrome (PMS), as had observations of the clustering of crimes of violence, psychiatric hospital admissions, and suicide attempts during the paramenstruum (4 days before to 4 days after menses). Dalton reported that 53% of suicides occur during these 8 days of the cycle, although she opined that depression was usually at work in concert with menstrual cycle phase (5). Although many explanatory hypotheses were generated, the potential mediators of the symptoms observed in PMS remained unknown...
Language: en |