Adolescence has been identified as a period with particular importance for understanding depression. It is believed that from about the age of 15, depression is approximately twice as likely to be experienced by girls as boys.

The high vulnerability to depression among girls has been linked to puberty, a biological event marked by hormonal changes and the onset of menstruation. This belief in existence of linkages between women’s menstrual cycles and moods, especially depressive feelings have resulted in a new category of disorder called “Pre menstrual syndrome”. It is a state, in which, women undergoes a range of emotions such as restlessness, low mood, irritability, poor concentration, and fatigue.

There are two prominent models, a bio-medical model and feminist social constructionist model, which provide an explanation for Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). The bio-medical explanations of PMS have focused on the possible hormonal, dietary, and psychosomatic basis for PMS. The feminists social constructionist suggest that the behavioral tendencies associated with PMS are taking on a façade of biological malfunction and are truly symbolic of a larger social discontent.. This article aims to understand premenstrual syndrome in adolescent Indian girls, from a feminist social constructionist perspective. A central reason for focusing on feminist social constructionist perspective is that, this school of thought view depression as a human experience and as an integrated biopsychosocial phenomenon. This viewpoint acknowledges the role of human values and sociocultural influences in prestructuring and shaping human experience and knowledge.

Feminists argue that in most of the researches on depression, gender is treated primarily as a characteristic of the embodied individual. The boundaries of the individual are taken, in a common sense way, as a surface skin of the physical body and gender is defined almost exclusively in terms of a person’s sex of assignment, as either female or male.

According to feminists, “premenstrual syndrome” is a gendered concept. They argue that labels such as premenstrual syndrome are often associated with connotations of craziness and irrationality. The use of such labels increases the risk of stigmatization for women. They believe that biological theories have neglected the experiences of women and even if their experiences are studied they are either disregarded or reframed according to mainstream construct. 

They emphasize that when a woman’s distress is interpreted as symptomatic of a mental disorder, attention is likely to focus on her body and to the neglect of her social circumstances. An emphasis on the body undermines the stressful aspects of woman’s lives (poverty, physical or sexual abuse) and their experiences of distress are likely to be downplayed or ignored all together. Thus such views in which women’s mental health problems are blamed on their bodies, neglect the important social events that are associated with their lives.   

Different cultures may have different set of beliefs about the nature of “feminity” and “masculinity”. These beliefs are often implicit and these meanings do permeate with experiences of women and men. Several studies based on feminist inquiry give a different understanding on the lived experiences of adolescent girls. These inquiries conceptualize female body as a cultural entity, where an organism is immersed in a culture, as a medium through which culture is expressed. This means that when female bodies undergo puberty, their experiences, reactions and expectations will be shaped by the predominant cultural discourses surrounding their bodies. The cultural discourses not only shape a girl’s experiences and actions but also affect the experiences and actions of others such as parents, and peers.  

A research by Anson (1999) illustrates that PMS experiences reflect early menstrual socialization. To understand this issue further I conducted a small research inquiry where I interviewed a group of girls between the ages 15-19 years about their experiences in relation to menstruation. It was found that girl’s attitudes toward menstruation and premenstrual experiences were associated with exposure to PMS in female family members and messages associated with it.

Most of the girls talked about how their menstrual bleeding makes them feel dirty and unclean and how they worry about drawing attention to themselves when menstruating.  They also reported feelings of embarrassment, shame and secrecy. One girl in the group reported that when she first got to know about her menstruation, she was completely shocked and clueless. She mentioned that she was confused and had no idea about what is happening to her. A large number of girls also reported negative attitude toward menstruation and conflicting interests between women’s productive and reproductive roles.

Another prominent theme that came out during the discussion with young girls was social isolation. One girl reported that, during menstruation she was not allowed to enter in the temple and the kitchen. Such prohibitions do induce feelings of isolation and shame in young girls. Thus, girls learn early in their menstrual lives to hide evidence of their menstrual periods from others and to keep their questions and concerns to themselves. Due to the lack of information and generally negative attitudes about menstruation, it is not surprising that girl’s accounts often reflect a sense of ambivalence about their own bodies. A theme emerging from several studies is that girls and women see the “body which menstruates” as being separate from the self. This Mind-body split is evident in the passive terms girls and women use to describe menstruation, depicting it as something which happens to them, to be managed and coped with.

Another research by Kissling (1996) on premenstrual syndrome have found, that “Menstruation and other uniquely female functions are apparently presented as a “special case”, implicitly asserting a view of male body as the norm.” Feminists point out that today’s construction of PMS reflects a continued acceptance of the medicalization of women’s behavior. When women’s problems are medicalized and pathologized then women’s bodies are more likely to be exposed to psychotropic drugs. The effects of these drugs are unknown in the long term, Kendall. (1990).

Thus this paper clearly depicts how socio-cultural factors impacts the lives of adolescent girls. It is important to understand how girls construct and articulate their experiences in their own words. This article is not about studying gender as a category or including young girls as a variable in research. It is about understanding the experiences of young girls from their standpoint. If depression is viewed from medical context only, then we as researchers will miss out the other important factors that do play a causal role in the etiology of depression. The essential meaning of the experiences that a young girl goes through can be grasped only by listening to the young girls themselves.

Adolescence has been identified as a period with particular importance for understanding depression. It is believed that from about the age of 15, depression is approximately twice as likely to be experienced by girls as boys.