Diagnosing Disorders: Premenstrual Syndrome In Women

“Women don’t get their period every week. If they did all the men in the world would be institutionalized”, that was quote the 1990’s hit show “The nanny. Having a period is a very normal and natural occurrence that happens to women. According to statics every woman will have at least 450 periods within her lifetime! Along with periods come PMS or formally known as premenstrual syndrome. PMS is the combination of symptoms that some women suffer from a week or so before their period. Symptoms appear before your period starts, usually as many as five days, and will disappear during your period. Women have been known to hate their period and often have a fluctuation of hormones within that time. So if this occurrence is so common and normal why …show more content…
I purpose we take this addition out of the DSM-V, because I feel it aids in the phenomenon of over medicalizing common day occurrences. By diagnosing women with this disorder we are now attaching a label to them and defining them as being sick because they experience what is to be a normal menstrual cycle. What this disorder doesn’t take into account is that every women is different and will experience their menstrual cycle and symptoms differently as well. Not only that but every women is different and handles situations differently to so overgeneralize a group of women is harmful. Many feminist groups have also stood up and fought against this addition. Many feel that this disorder is another label to give women to put them down. The reason being is because now they are calling women ill for experiencing something that is very normal. Many stated that if men had to experience a menstrual cycle that they would handle it the same way if not worse! This can be compared to our book “The Protest Psychosis”. When the woman in the book decided that she didn’t want to be a house wife anymore and that she wanted to venture out and do things for herself, they were even more convinced that she was insane and labeled her as such because she didn’t want to conform to the norm. As a matter of fact, we should stop and look closely at PMDD and their symptoms. If a woman or anybody for that matter is experiencing those symptoms at an alarming rate then we may be diagnosing them with the wrong illness. There could be a multitude of illness that they could be suffering from that we have not explored. Depression is one that comes to mind also mood disorder. This to have become a problem of itself, misdiagnosing