Premenstrual dysphoric disorder - article in The Observer.

[MagpiePi]

I thought this was a really informative article until the inevitable…

“..The third reason PMDD is so poorly understood and so often under or misdiagnosed, is that although it affects trans and non-binary people, too, it’s classified as a women’s health problem and as such isn’t a major area of research or education.”

It affects trans* and non-binary people BECAUSE they are women.

I hate the implication that it is should be more of a because concern if trans/nbs are affected.

*I am assuming they mean transmen although it wouldn’t surprise me if there were transwomen claiming to have PMDD.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/04/rage-would-bubble-out-of-nowhere-my-battle-with-a-premenstrual-disorder

Sometimes I think sentences like that are just shoehorned in under coercion.

I have not read the article yet, but assuming you've quoted it correctly, it reads as if the writer acknowledges disproportionate attention is paid to trans issues; acknowledges nobody gives a shit about women's issues; wishes the fact that some pmdd sufferers are trans would bring the interest and funding to the cause.

I'm sure it was supposed to be a standard virtue signal to prevent hate mail.

I felt the same. As someone who battled with PMDD for years, I was interested in the article. It was all going well until I got to that bit. I wondered if it was an over zealous (read idiotic) Observer sub editor who shoe horned that in, rather than the author. Or maybe the author is a prat.

“..The third reason PMDD is so poorly understood and so often under or misdiagnosed, is that although it affects trans and non-binary people, too, it’s classified as a women’s health problem and as such isn’t a major area of research or education.”

That would actually make it important, wouldn't it? Sadly it's just thought to be about boring old women.

Is this not just PMS? I had no idea this 'disorder' wasn't everyone's experience and just assumed I was particularly hopeless at managing my mental health.

So much of that article is familiar. I'm so angry at how little is known about this. I agree the author is making the point that as a womens issue it has been ignored. I wonder how many transmen have this and know their distress at being female might be caused by this regular hormonal event.

It does read as if an editor has just added "although it affects trans and non-binary people, too". The reason it looks like a late addition is that it undermines the sense of what would otherwise be a lucid sentence. Without the addition, the implied contrast would clearly be with men - ie women's health is less favourably treated than men's. But with the addition it isn't altogether clear what the comparator is.
Also, the addition seems to imply (a) that trans and non-binary people are not women and (b) that the health of trans and non-binary people is more favourably treated than that of women. The first implication doesn't make sense, regardless of whether you define 'woman' as a biological category or as a gender identity category, since on either definition some trans people will be women. And the second implication is one that would be vociferously denied by anyone who was motivated to shoehorn in the text that was clearly added here.
So all-in-all it just sounds like a rather hamfisted obfuscation of an article about women's health, ironically one that reinforces the very point that it invades itself into - the less favourable treatment of women's health.

I never had pain nor pms till perimenopause. Still don't really have period pain.

My joints go crazy though and I can feel quite ill all over.

I have friends who are suicidal the week before period and take ssris just for that phase.

It sounds rather like the argument made by that endometriosis charity founder on "Women's Hour" - the one that got eviscerated by Emma Barnett along with her hire, the lovely Steph. IIRC it ran along exactly these lines - endometriosis is not solely a women's condition, look men get it too! and that's important because if it's a people's rather than women's condition it might attract more research funding. As if the three men ever to present with an endo-like condition were enough magical men essence to suddenly make the issue of more salience to funders.

My PMDD was wrongly diagnosed as bipolar disorder (after I suffered postnatal psychosis, another hormone-driven illness) and I spent seven years on lithium, which is not a something you want to do unnecessarily. I don’t feel resentful, because my doctor was doing what was thought to be best, and the symptoms of PMDD resemble psychosis. But no one listened to me when I insisted that my symptoms were driven by my menstrual cycle. I was told by a psychiatrist that hormones had nothing to do with mood swings.
I wasn’t until I visited John Studd’s website that I understood what my problem was (though he still calls it PMS).
https://www.studd.co.uk/

No, it's like PMS but worse. I used to get PMS and it was sore breasts, craving chocolate, being a bit moody and weepy. Then I developed PMDD and half the month was a blur of depression, anxiety, rage, insomnia and excruciating breast pain, building to a crescendo when my period would start and I'd revert to feeling sane again.
It was awful. It went on for over a decade. I'm now in perimenopause and finally got it all under control with Mirena coil and estrogen patches. It feels incredible to be on an even keel.

It does feel like the reference to trans and nb has been shoe horned in, as the rest of the article , refreshingly, only mentions women.
I’m disappointed as I thought the Observer had avoided the capture that is all over the guardian.

It does sound like a horrendous disorder and yet another example of women being not being listened to and female hormones not being taken into account.

It sounds rather like the argument made by that endometriosis charity founder on "Women's Hour" - the one that got eviscerated by Emma Barnett along with her hire, the lovely Steph. IIRC it ran along exactly these lines - endometriosis is not solely a women's condition, look men get it too! and that's important because if it's a people's rather than women's condition it might attract more research funding. As if the three men ever to present with an endo-like condition were enough magical men essence to suddenly make the issue of more salience to funders.

YY. I find it very frustrating when genderists imply it's beneficial to women to discard that the reason for discrimination is because of the fact of female bodies being considered less important because of societal sexism and misogyny.

Is this not just PMS? I had no idea this 'disorder' wasn't everyone's experience and just assumed I was particularly hopeless at managing my mental health.

It's an extreme form of PMS, I think. But not all women necessarily have mental PMS symptoms. I never did until now, in perimenopause in my early 50s, and it's still only fairly mild mood fluctuations tbh.

at how obvious it is that these conditions aren't important enough unless men (or people who think they're men) get them.