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Menstruation and Personality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Alec Coppen  and
Neil Kessel
Alec Coppen
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council, Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, Carshalton, Surrey
Neil Kessel
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Unit for Research on the Epidemiology of Psychiatric Illness, Department of Psychological Medicine, Edinburgh, 8
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Extract

This investigation is concerned with the prevalence of dysmenorrhoea and premenstrual symptoms in the general population and with their relationship to personality.

Many authors have expressed the opinion that such relationships exist, but we will confine our review here to those studies which have presented supporting data. Wittkower and Wilson (1940) studied 57 patients with primary dysmenorrhoea and found there was a history of childhood maladjustment four times as often in these patients as in a control group. They considered that patients with dysmenorrhoea could be classified into two main personality types: the first, “characterized by deep resentment of their feminine role”; the second, “obviously immature physically and either shy or shut-in or chronically anxious and complaintive”. Sainsbury (1960) observed a significantly raised neuroticism score on the Maudsley Personality Inventory for patients attending hospital for dysmenorrhoea. Such views as these are not universally held, and would certainly not be shared by many gynaecologists. Nor are they supported by the little evidence forthcoming from population studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 109 , Issue 463 , November 1963 , pp. 711 - 721
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1963 

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