Cited by 153Menstrual Health and DisordersMaternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and PostpartumBipolar Disorder and Treatment

Psychiatric Symptoms Across the Menstrual Cycle in Adult Women: A Comprehensive Review

Open access
Handy, Ariel B., Greenfield, Shelly F., Yonkers, Kimberly A., Payne, Laura A.·2022·Harvard Review of Psychiatry

Abstract

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: After participating in this activity, learners should be better able to:• Discuss and outline the general and overlapping effects of the menstrual cycle on women's mental health. ABSTRACT: A growing body of research demonstrates menstrual cycle-dependent fluctuations in psychiatric symptoms; these fluctuations can therefore be considered as prevalent phenomena. Possible mechanisms underlying these fluctuations posit behavioral, psychological, and neuroendocrine influences. Recent reviews document cyclic exacerbation of symptoms and explore these mechanisms in the context of specific and often single disorders. The question remains, however, as to whether there are general and overlapping effects of the menstrual cycle on women's mental health. To address this gap, we synthesized the literature examining the exacerbation of a variety of psychiatric symptoms across the menstrual cycle in adult women. Results show that the premenstrual and menstrual phases are most consistently implicated in transdiagnostic symptom exacerbation. Specifically, strong evidence indicates increases in psychosis, mania, depression, suicide/suicide attempts, and alcohol use during these phases. Anxiety, stress, and binge eating appear to be elevated more generally throughout the luteal phase. The subjective effects of smoking and cocaine use are reduced during the luteal phase, but fewer data are available for other substances. Less consistent patterns are demonstrated for panic disorder, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder, and it is difficult to draw conclusions for symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and trichotillomania because of the limited data. Future research should focus on developing standardized approaches to identifying menstrual cycle phases and adapting pharmacological and behavioral interventions for managing fluctuations in psychiatric symptoms across the menstrual cycle.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1097/hrp.0000000000000329

Cites

230 of 230 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [5]Zaka M Mahmood KT. Pre-menstrual syndrome—a review. J Pharm Sci Res 2012; 4: 1684– 91.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Handy, A. B., Greenfield, S. F., Yonkers, K. A., & Payne, L. A.
Affiliations
Harvard University (US)
Corresponding author
Payne, Laura A.
Venue
Harvard Review of Psychiatry
Published
2022-03
Volume
30
Issue
2
Pages
100-117
ISSN
  • 1067-3229 (ISSN-L)
  • 1465-7309
OpenAlex
W4220970268
Cited by
153
References
230
Citations by year
2026: 44 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 6
FWCI
5.42
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Harvard Review of Psychiatry (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Menstrual Health and Disorders
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Bipolar Disorder and Treatment
Keywords
menstrual cycle, psychiatric symptoms, premenstrual phase, luteal phase, women's mental health, transdiagnostic symptoms, psychosis, mania, depression, suicide, alcohol consumption, anxiety, binge eating, substance use, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, neuroendocrine mechanisms
MeSH terms
Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Female, Humans, Menstrual Cycle, Smoking, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review