Emotion Regulation Therapy on Depression and Marital Intimacy in Women with Premenstrual Syndrome

Many women experience mood and behavioral changes in their premenstrual period, and in many of them, the changes are so severe that they impair social and family activity. The syndrome involves a wide range of emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms within a few days to two weeks before menstruation, which disappears a few days after the onset of bleeding. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has divided the disorder into two mild forms of PMS and severe forms that are mainly psychological symptoms of the premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The premenstrual syndrome causes significant changes in the individual. Sometimes depression, anxiety, irritability, and aggression become so severe that onechr('39')s family and social functioning are severely overshadowed. One of the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome is decreased marital intimacy. Intimacy is a basic need that requires awareness, deep understanding, and acceptance. Intimacy also means closeness, likeness, and a loving relationship with another. On the one hand, to treat human problems, in addition to drug treatments, numerous psychological therapies have been devised over the years. One of these treatments is emotion regulation therapy. Emotional adjustment involves the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies to change over time with the intensity of an emotionchr('39')s experience, and it has been found that individuals exposed to stressful and anxious events have different emotion regulation strategies to modify by modifying the experience. They use their emotions. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of emotion regulation therapy on depression and marital intimacy in premenstrual syndrome women.

This study was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test with the control group. The statistical population of all women with premenstrual syndrome referred to a gynecology clinic in Razavi hospital of Mashhad in the second half of 2019. Three of them selected by sampling the available method and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received eight sessions of 60-minute sessions of emotion regulation therapy, but the control group received no training. The groups completed the Beck Depression Inventory (1996) and Walker and Thomsonchr('39')s (1983) Marital Intimacy Questionnaire as pre-test and post-test. Data were analyzed by SPSS software using a one-way analysis of covariance. The level of significance set at 0.05.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between experimental and control groups in marital depression and intimacy. In other words, emotion regulation therapy reduced depression and increased marital intimacy in women with PMS (p<0.001).

Based on the results, it can be concluded that emotion regulation therapy can help to reduce depression and increase marital intimacy in women with PMS. Therefore, counselors and therapists can use emotion regulation therapy as a new intervention method to reduce the symptoms of menstrual disorders.