Women experiencing physical and psychological symptoms before their periods are at increased risk of death by suicide.
- Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects 20 to 40% of women of childbearing age.
- Women with premenstrual disorders are twice as likely to commit suicide, a new study finds.
- This “confirms the importance of careful monitoring of young patients.”
Fatigue, mood swings, painful breasts, bloating, spots… Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects 20 to 40% of women of childbearing age, according to Inserm. This series of physical and psychological symptoms, which are of varying intensity, occurs during the luteal phase (between ovulation and the next period) and disappears after the arrival of menstruation. Although these manifestations are not serious, they are painful, even disabling, for patients.
Suicide: twice as likely in women with premenstrual disorders
In a recent study, researchers from the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) revealed that people with premenstrual disorders are at higher risk of suicide. To reach this conclusion, they analyzed data from several Swedish registries and traced the mortality rates of 67,748 patients diagnosed with premenstrual syndrome at the age of 35 between 2001 and 2018. Their information was compared with that of 406,488 unaffected women. The team took into account several factors, such as age, socioeconomic status, and somatic and psychiatric comorbidities.
According to the results, published in the journal JAMA Network Open367 deaths were recorded among volunteers with menstrual disorders and 1,958 deaths were recorded among participants without the syndrome during a six-year follow-up. Women with menstrual disorders were more likely to die from non-natural causes. In detail, they were on average twice as likely to commit suicide. The analysis also showed that patients diagnosed before the age of 25 had higher all-cause mortality, with deaths from both suicide and natural causes.
Finding the causes of a higher suicide risk
“Further work is needed to find the reasons for this higher suicide risk. (…) This research confirms the importance of careful monitoring of young patients and highlights the need to develop suicide prevention strategies for all women suffering from PMS,” concluded the authors.