Are premenstrual symptoms linked to stress and poor quality of life in female students?

Background: Menstrual abnormalities seem to occur more frequently in students studying medicine and health sciences. Menstrual abnormalities have the potential to impact women’s health, their physical and emotional wellbeing as well as social and school functioning, there is a clear need for better understanding of these disease processes, their associations, and impact on quality of life. The present study aims to explore the association between menstrual abnormalities, psychological disturbances and eating disorders among female students studying health sciences subjects Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, in which students from all health science colleges at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Saudi Arabia, were asked to partake by answering questions pertaining to their demographic data, menstrual patterns, perceived stress, and quality of life using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS ) and the 20-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-20) respectively. All statistical analyses were done using IBM SPSS Statistics software. Results: Most respondents had a normal length cycle, duration and flow. Many of our respondents reported some type of premenstrual symptoms with mixed symptoms being the most prevalent 44%. Those who had mixed premenstrual symptoms also had high levels of perceived stress (p<0.001). However, there was no correlation between menstrual cycle length and duration and levels of perceived stress. Regarding the SF-20 quality of life components who had premenstrual symptoms including pain, psychological symptoms , and mixed symptoms did poorly on the physical, social, and mental health aspects of quality of life. Discussion: Our findings are in line with those identified by other authors who demonstrate a strong positive correlation with premenstrual symptoms and perceived stress and also an association between menstrual abnormalities and quality of life and activities of daily living. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, causality cannot be determined and prospective studies are recommended in the future Conclusions: We found that those who had menorrhagia, premenstrual symptoms, or eating disorders reported high levels of stress. We have also demonstrated a link between premenstrual symptoms, menstrual abnormalities, PCOS , and worse quality of life. We hope that this unique study will shed some light on the struggles faced by health science female students and help policy makers enhance mental and reproductive/endocrinological health care access for them

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