The Subjective Experience of PMS

Premenstrual Syndrome(PMS)has been researched across many disciplines including Psychology, Women's Health, Women's Studies and Sociology. It has been researched as a personal issue, a health issue, a psychological issue ,and a political issue. Underlying these approaches to the study of PMS are two basic paradigms:the medical model and the social constructionist model. A rather polarized debate has emerged between the two. While both approaches have contributed to research on PMS, neither paradigm has focused particular attention on what exactly PMS is and what it means from the perspective of the women who experience it. In this project, I have examined narrative accounts of PMS as told by women who experience it. Findings suggest that these women view PMS as a very complex phenomenon and they find different ways of making sense of it in their lives. My findings confirm some aspects of previous research while also yielding some new insights into the lived experience of PMS. It is my hope that this project will spark more discourse on the subjective experience of PMS.