Learning-Theoretical Aspects of Primary Dysmenorrhea

Abstract

Women suffering from severe primary dysmenorrhea (PD) show a typical behaviour pattern characterized by flight, avoidance, inactivity and helplessness. The question is if there is a common mechanism of origin in all those individual women who display such PD behaviour. A learning-theoretical model is presented concerning the origin of the connection between the stimulus of menstruation and the response of PD behaviour in women with severe PD: — Women have an increased physiological arousal premenstrually and during menstruation. — Women have a tendency to label the increased arousal negatively for two reasons: (1) Because of negative attitudes towards menstruation acquired from the social environment. (2) Because women have a lack of knowledge about their genitals and their functions, there is a lack of correct labelling of menstruation. Inexplicable arousal is mostly labelled as something “wrong”. — The negatively labelled increased arousal pre- and intermenstrually leads to an increased receptivity for conditioning. — The increased receptivity for conditioning means an increased proneness to react with a specific response to a certain stimulus, i. e. with PD behaviour as a response to the stimulus of menstruation. — Premenstrually highly anxious women are more receptive to conditioning than women who are not anxious premenstrually. The experience of PD makes the woman anticipate menstruation with anxiety, which thus forms the basis of a vicious circle. The validity of this theoretical model needs to be tested in experimental research.