Emotion Dysregulation of Women with Premenstrual Syndrome

The aim of the current study was to test whether women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) had difficulties in emotion regulation. In Study 1, we investigated the relationship between the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies and the severity of PMS (n = 230). The results showed that the severity of PMS was negatively associated with the habitual use of reappraisal, but positively associated with the habitual use of suppression. In Study 2, we first investigated the difference in the spontaneous use of suppression versus reappraisal between women with (n = 42) and without PMS (n = 42) when watching sad film clips. Then we instructed some participants (PMS group = 20, healthy group = 21) to use reappraisal to regulate their emotions induced by a second sad film clip, and the other participants were asked to watch the second film clip freely (PMS group = 22, healthy group = 21). The results showed that there was no significant difference between participants with and without PMS in the self-reported spontaneous use of emotion-regulation strategies. For participants with PMS, increases in spontaneous suppression use were associated with increases in skin conductance level (SCL), while this association was not found among participants without PMS.