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Randomised trial, 2020

Can a mental health training program help teenage girls with PMS?

Yes. Teenage girls who went through a training program had less physical complaints, anxiety, sleep problems, social difficulties, and depression than girls who did not.

Moderate study design 100 teenage girls with PMS in Shiraz, Iran, selected from a pool of 400

What they did

Researchers in Shiraz, Iran, ran a randomized controlled trial with 100 teenage girls who had PMS (chosen from a larger group of 400). Half got six training sessions, twice a week, two hours each; the other half did not. They measured mental health and PMS symptoms using two standard questionnaires before comparing the groups.

What they found

Average age was about 16.56 years in the training group and 16.24 years in the control group. The training group had significantly lower average scores for physical complaints, anxiety, sleep disorder, social function problems, and depression compared to the control group (P < 0.001).

What it means for you

A structured mental health training program may genuinely help teenage girls cope better with PMS symptoms. This was done in one city in Iran with teenagers only, so it may not apply to adult women or other settings, and the abstract does not say how long the benefits lasted.

100

Participants

6

Training sessions

P<0.001

P-value for improvements

About the study

Original title
Implementing of mental health training programs for promotion of health affected teenage girls to premenstrual syndrome: A community-based study
Authors
Abootalebi M, Dehghani M, Akbarzadeh M
Journal
Journal of education and health promotion
Year
2020
Study design
Randomised trial
Participants
100
What was tested
Six mental health training sessions, twice weekly, 2 hours each
Open access
Yes

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