PMDD is Real. Maybe Now We Can Work Toward a Cure.
It’s time.
In June 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially classified Pre-Menstrual Dysphoria Disorder (PMDD) in it’s new classification system ICD-11. The disease was labelled as a hormonal disease, not a mental illness.
For women like me who suffer this awful disease, it was a revelation. The medical establishment had finally recognized us. We were going to see research and interest from professionals, not just the occasional hit piece in women’s magazines. Help was on the way.
Four months later, almost nothing has changed. That is unacceptable.
PMDD makes the rounds occasionally in health news as an aberration, something to gawk at and wonder about. It’s a wonder of the human body that a woman can become a different person emotionally simply due to her internal hormonal cocktail. She suddenly sheds her skin and becomes an emotional mess determined to end all of her positive relationships. She binge eats. She sleeps up to fourteen hours a day. She acts like a cavewoman who needs to find a mate that will impregnate her before it’s too late — because this erratic period often correlates to the most fertile part of her cycle.
This is funny and freakish — until you realize that this is true for up to five percent of women of childbearing…
