This study aimed to examine the relationship between psychological distress in menstruation-related symptoms and well-being of women in their 20s and 30s. To measure psychological distress in menstruation-related symptoms, the “psychological sufferings in menstruation-related symptoms (PSMS) scale” and “self-disgust due to menstruation-related symptoms (SDMS) scale” (both have two subscales) were selected. Five hundred women were divided into two groups, high or low, based on their scores on each subscale of the PSMS and SDMS scales. In all four subscales, the high group had lower scores on self-esteem, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction compared to the low group. There were significant differences in the scores of all six factors of the “psychological well-being scale” between the high and low groups for all subscales of the SDMS scale. There were significant differences in the two subscales of the psychological well-being scale, “purpose in life” and “self-acceptance,” between the high and low groups for the subscale of the PSMS scale, “a feeling of being out of control.” Similarly, there were significant differences in four subscales, “purpose in life,”“self-acceptance,”“personal growth,” and “positive relations with others,” between the high and low groups for the subscale of the PSMS scale, “a feeling of obscurity.”

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) impairs quality of life (QOL) due to various physical and psychological symptoms. Many patients are concerned about the adverse effects of low-dose pills and psychotropic drugs for treatments, and drug selection is limited if there is a desire to have a child. Hence, it is important for clinicians to include Kampo medicine as an option, but the choice of formulations is difficult. In this study, we focused on “irritability and anger” among the symptoms of PMS, and examined the usefulness of a Kampo formulation “Yokukansankachimpihange”. The Menstrual Distress Questionnaires (MDQ) Japanese version, Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for subjective symptoms, and SF-8 (Health-related Quality of Life Scale) were compared before and after the treatment. Forty-six patients were included in the study, of which 20 patients have completed and analyzed for three menstrual cycles. The MDQ decreased significantly in all regions from 1 month after administration, as did the VAS. In SF-8, mental health and physical health improved significantly after one month and three months, respectively. These results indicate that Yokukansankachimpihange is effective for PMS patients who are irritability. Yokukansankachimpihange is also expected to improve QOL by alleviating not only for psychological symptoms but also for physical symptoms.

In the perinatal mental health care, it is necessary to detect psychiatric high-risk pregnant and postpartum women and to cooperate with multi-institution. The aim of this study is to describe the actual situation of first medical examination during the perinatal period at the psychiatric emergency hospital. Forty-eight pregnant and postpartum cases were first visit from January 2017 to December 2019 in Nozoe hospital. However, 29 cases (60.4%) had the psychiatry medical history, they were not informing an obstetrician. Postpartum cases were 70.8% and there was a peak during three to six months postpartum period in particular. Twenty-one cases (43.8%) interrupted their visit and mostly cases canceled within 6 months. As these results, we support perinatal cases by multi-occupation and cooperate with a maternity hospital and an administrative agency. Psychiatric emergency hospital needs to examine patients immediately at the time of a symptom appearance and continue treatment without self-interruption.

Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is widely used to screen for postpartum depression in Japan, while the Verification of diurnal variation affecting EPDS scores had not been done until now. Since social networking sites such as Twitter is informative for mothers to share their experiences and feelings in recent years, we invited postpartum women to post the tweets including their EPDS scores online to assess the characteristics among postpartum women with depressive symptom. From 8:00 pm on January 11 to 8:00 pm on January 12, 2020, we collected 2,326 tweets using our Japanese hashtag. We collected the EPDS scores which can be completed online and 2,195 tweets were confirmed that the EPDS scores were included. The median EPDS scores of 2,195 tweets were 9.0±0.6. 57% of tweets included the EPDS scores of 9 points or higher. We found the median EPDS scores in each posting time peaking around 4:00 AM. In our study, the posted EPDS scores were generally higher than those in the previous studies and fluctuated depending on the time of day. We need to be aware of the possibility of diurnal changes in postpartum depressive symptoms or possibility to reported lower than actual EPDS scores.