PMDD Presentation

Happy Tuesday everyone it's not Tuesday,

In my psychology of women class, we were given a list of possible topics to do a project on and I saw, "pms in men and women" and my hand shot up and I asked if I can do my project on PMD and my professor said yes!

So here is the presentation part of my project.

Hi, my name is Ky Graham and my presentation is on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder which I will be calling PMDD for now on because it's a mouth full. I included a trigger warning on my presentation just because I use the words, "Depression and suicidal thoughts". I don't go into detail but just be aware if you're sensitive to those sort of words.

What is PMDD? Recent studies show that it's genetic. It's a mood disorder triggered by the hormones such as, estrogen and progesterone, experienced during the Luteal Phase of a woman's menstrual cycle.

The main symptoms are mostly psychological such as depression and suicidal thoughts, anxiety, including anxiety and panic attacks and insomnia. Some of the physiological side effects include headaches, nausea, and cramping, just to name a few and of course, symptoms do vary.

The symptoms of PMDD follow the pattern of the menstrual cycle. The Luteal Phase is where most of the symptoms occur and at their highest intensity because the symptoms are triggered by the hormone fluctuation here. Once ovulation hits, you drop your egg, your hormones spike and go back down and spike again here in the middle of the Luteal phase before going back down for the menstrual phase. The misnomer is that these hormones spikes are during your period but it's actually in the one to two weeks before your period and once your period begins you start to experience some relief.

Diagnosis can be difficult because there's not a lot of information on it. Some of the websites I found still said we don't know if it's genetic, what causes it or if it'sd even real. It's not well known even in the medical field. And the symptoms can look like other medical conditions like depression, general anxiety or PMS.

PMS is most often misdiagnosed as premenstrual syndrome or PMS because they have similar symptoms and causation of those symptoms but the big difference is the severity of those symptoms. PMDD is severe and debilitating and because of that, the treatment is different. There's also a difference in the percentage of woman who suffer PMDD. According to my research, 75% of women suffer from the occasional PMS but only 7-8% of women have PMDD.

Now I mentioned that treatment is different. It often starts with lifestyle changes such as eating healthier and exercising can help regulate some of the psychological symptoms. Birth control is usually prescribed because it helps regulate those hormones and keeps your menstrual cycle consistent which helps with prediction when symptoms hit. If you know when you're going to have that high-stress week you won't schedule high-stress situations during that week. Birth control is often paired with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) that acts as an anti-anxiety and anti-depressant as those tend to be the most debilitating.

Now the reason I chose PMDD for my project is because I have PMDD. And because it's genetic my mom has it (that's a picture of us from prom) I got my period in the sixth grade (pic) but I didn't really start getting those really bad symptoms until middle school. (Pic) This picture here is from my yearbook. You can kind of tell where I was mental.

At this point, a woman in my class spoke up, "You scratched your face out?"

"Yes, I did." A couple people made noises of sympathy.

I had really bad insomnia fueled by really bad anxiety and I also had really bad depression and suicidal thoughts. So I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and given a really bad drug that made me worse. It made me gain weight which made me more depressed and more anxious. Middle school is already hard enough without all of this going on so I was having a really hard time. Eventually, my mom started to think it was PMDD because my symptoms followed that pattern and after doing some research she learned that it was genetic. Through her advocating for me I was taken off the other drug and put on birth control around fourteen so waaay before I was sexually active and a couple years after that I was put on an SSRI. The significance of being on birth control since I was fourteen is that last summer I hit my saturation level from being on it for so long, so the birth control wasn't working for me anymore, it wasn't regulating my hormones and therefore wasn't doing anything for my symptoms. So I was put on a different birth control that was better tailored for PMDD and that has been going really well.I do still occasionally deal with some depression and anxiety as well as sensory sensitivity. I'm really sensitive to loud noises and repetitive noises like taping or clicking pens.

That's about it. If anyone has any questions about PMDD or my personal experience with it feel free to ask. I'm an open book.

[I'm writing this next part from memory so it isn't completely accurate.]

Q - So the difference between PMS and PMDD is the severity? Like PMDD is debilitating?

A - Yes, for me my depression was so bad I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and my mom was diagnosed with PMDD because she was having such bad cramps she had to go to the hospital and they thought she was having a miscarriage.

Q - What are some of your coping mechanisms?

A - When I'm going through the up and down wave of life if I find that I'm down for too long and I become aware of it like last summer when I look to my meds and see if they need to be reconfigured somehow. Short term I deal with depression and anxiety the way anyone with depression and anxiety deals with it. When I'm having an anxiety attack I call my boyfriend and have him talk me down and when I'm depressed I surround myself with friends and make them tell me they love me.

Q - How do you know when you should be regulating these things on your own or turning to medication? Because I think my friend might...

[I didn't word this right because I was so anxious so this is my thought through answer.]

A - When the symptoms are making it difficult to live your life. When you're worried that your friend is going to do something to themselves it's time to seek out help and probably a medication which is true in any situation. If someone is having suicidal thoughts no matter if its from PMDD or bipolar disorder it's time for them to seek help. For me when I hit my very lowest point in middle school I needed medication.

Q - Is there research on older women with PMDD who are going through menopause? Because you're so young.

A - There isn't a lot of information about women going through menopause while having PMDD and I don't know anything about it besides my mom having PMDD and currently going through menopause and it being difficult for her.

Q - What's the difference between anxiety attacks and panic attacks?

A - The teacher answers this and the class goes off on a tangent for a bit while I'm still standing at the front so when it gets back to me I ask, "Are there any other questions for me?"

Q - Who's your hair stylist?

A - Sweat, (I joke while wiping my forehead) no, my mom cuts my hair actually.

I was extremely nervous while presenting but because the class now knew I had anxiety I felt a little more comfortable like they're giving me a pass for talking too fast and not breathing then pausing for too long because I lost my place. At one point the couple sitting in front of me, who asked a lot of the questions and ended up talking to me after class, assured me that I did a really good job and when I sat down several people around me said the same thing as well as the teacher. And after class the woman who sat behind me let me pet her support dog. And there was a baby in a class strapped to the front of the class doula. It's one of those classes where everyone becomes friends and gets to know each other. So far I know one of the guys was in the military, there's some sort of weed seller person, the woman with the baby is a doula, one of the women in the gay couple I talked to is a mortician with five kids and her partner (I think she said wife) is a funeral service director, the girl in front of me is eighteen and was adopted, the guy next to me I actually knew from high school and was able to reconnect with, there's another guy in the class I've known off an on since middle school, the woman behind me has a dog named Elvis and he's her diabetic alert dog, I think she said, as well as an emotional support dog and our teacher picks people to be in juries at court. Comparing this to other classes where absolutely no one speaks to each other (I have been in several) that's a lot. It's a really cool class and I have a lot of fun.

Totally Ky