The Effect of Cognitive-Behavioural Stress Management Training on Reducing Depressive Symptoms in Women with Premenstrual Syndrome

 Premenstrual syndrome is one of the most common disorders of puberty age in women. This syndrome is associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, stress management and anxiety reduction can probably be effective in relieving the symptoms of this syndrome. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of cognitive-behavioural stress management training on reducing depressive symptoms in women with premenstrual syndrome.

This was a quasi-experimental study of pre-test and post-test with experimental group and control group. The statistical population included all women aged 15 to 45 years in Hamadan city (Iran) who were selected from 40 patients in clusters and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of cognitive-behavioural stress management training and the control group did not receive any training. Both groups answered the short form of Beck Depression Inventory (1996) before and after the intervention and the results were analysed using multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results showed that the depressive state in the experimental group before the intervention was 26.4 ± 5.36 which after treatment and intervention reached 18.75 ± 4.56 which showed a significant decrease (P=0.01). But in the control group before the experiment, it was 26.5 ± 10.38, which reached 27.55 ± 8.74, with no significant change.

The findings of this study indicate that cognitive-behavioural stress management training was effective in reducing depressive symptoms in women with premenstrual syndrome and the results of this study can be used to develop public health.