Changing the perception of premenstrual dysphoric disorder - An online-experiment using the Stereotype Content Model

ABSTRACT

Women with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) are often faced with prejudices about the premenstrual phase. The aim of this study was to investigate whether providing information (psychoeducation) could improve study participants’ perception of a PMDD-patient and whether experimentally-induced prejudices about PMDD resulted in stigmatization. Two hundred sixteen students (50% female; aged 18–42 years) from Philipps University Marburg participated in January 2014. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups (EG1, EG2) or to a control group (CG). EG1 read a text informing about PMDD. EG2 read a text with stereotypic PMDD-information. CG received a text with information unrelated to PMDD. Then, all participants watched a video of a woman reporting about her PMDD. Finally, participants appraised the woman on the cognitive dimensions warmth and competence as well as on PMDD-related attributes (depressive symptoms, emotional regulation). Participants of EG1 rated the woman as warmer (p <  .001), more competent (p =  .006), and with less depressive symptoms (p < .001) than the CG. The results by study group did not differ by gender. Stereotypic information did not differ significantly among the study groups. Psychoeducation can facilitate the understanding of PMDD-patients and should be integrated in future research on PMDD-treatments.

KEYWORDS:

• Stigmatization
• Stereotype Content Model (SCM)
• Psychoeducation
• premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
• Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)

Acknowledgments

This project is partly funded by a grant from the Outpatient Clinic for Psychotherapy Marburg. The authors wish to thank Thomas Schäfer for his valuable comments on methodological issues, and Martin Sonnenberg, Jan Weber, and Daniel Corbett for proofreading the report. In addition, we thank all our participants for sharing their time with us.

Disclosure statement

There is no actual or potential conflict of interest for any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Notes

1. We are aware that additional recommendations exist to diagnose severe premenstrual symptoms (e.g. Green et al. 2017; Janda et al. 2017). Many women who do not meet all diagnosis criteria for PMDD have severe impairment due to their premenstrual symptoms. For research purposes, we focused on PMDD to use the clearly defined diagnostic criteria within our experiment.