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Survey study, 2018

Is a girl's temperament linked to how much premenstrual symptoms bother her?

Girls with irritable, mood-varying, or sad-leaning personality types had more premenstrual symptoms. This suggests that personality type may influence how much premenstrual symptoms affect a girl.

Early or limited evidence Adolescent girls from 4 schools in Ranchi, India

What they did

Researchers recruited adolescent girls from 4 schools and used questionnaires to measure their personality type and premenstrual symptoms.

What they found

Girls with irritable, cyclothymic (mood-varying), or dysthymic (sad-leaning) temperament showed a clear link with premenstrual symptoms. These personality types were connected to all types of premenstrual symptoms including physical, psychological, and body-related ones.

What it means for you

A girl's natural personality type may influence how severe her premenstrual symptoms are. The main limitation is that the sample size is not specified and the study only included girls from schools in one region of India.

4

Schools in study

3

Personality types linked to symptoms

About the study

Original title
Premenstrual Symptoms: Correlation with Temperament
Authors
Rekha Patel
Journal
International Journal of Indian Psychology
Year
2018
Study design
Survey study
What was tested
None; personality type and symptoms were measured as existing traits
Open access
Yes
Original abstract

Background: Premenstrual syndrome is particularly common problem in the young age group and represents significant public health problem (Halbreich et al., 2003). During adolescence, temperament plays a major role to determine how a person will deal with a stressors and different type of physical and psychological changes. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the correlation between temperament and premenstrual tension symptoms in adolescent girls. Method: In this study 4 girl’s schools were selected in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Participants from the schools were recruited by purposive sampling method as per the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All the participants were given a brief description about the study and ensured about the confidentiality. Subsequent doubts were thoroughly clarified and asked to give an informed consent. All the tools (premenstrual symptoms checklist, TEMPS-A, were administered at the same time. Results: Findings of current study show that there is significant correlation of various type of temperament namely dysthymic, cyclothymic and irritable with premenstrual symptoms. There was significant correlation found between various type of temperament and various sub domains of premenstrual symptoms namely, biological, psychological and somatic. Conclusion: The study found significant correlation between temperament and premenstrual tension symptoms.

Reproduced under CC-BY.

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