Prevalence and knowledge of premenstrual syndrome among adolescent girls in India

Abstract

Monthly premenstrual syndrome (PMS) lasts for 6 days up until menopause. During women’s reproductive years they experience an estimated amount of severe symptoms for 3000 days. The present study is aimed to assess the prevalence and knowledge on PMS among adolescents and effectiveness of teaching tools in improving the knowledge of PMS among adolescents using systematic review method. Prevalence and knowledge of PMS were systematically reviewed. A search was conducted using keywords premenstrual syndrome, PMS in adolescents/teenagers in reliable English articles. The initial search 874 articles on PubMed were available. In all 18 articles from the year 2008-2019 that were reviewed has shown there are more than 50% of adolescent girls suffering from PMS in each study and pertaining to the knowledge result shows that girls have a lack/little knowledge on what PMS is, and during an intervention of any sort results show that there was an improvement in the knowledge of the girls after the intervention was implemented, displaying the effectiveness of educational programs regarding PMS and how it increase knowledge regarding PMS. PMS is highly prevalent among female students. Every adolescent girl must be aware of premenstrual syndrome and its effect and how it can be managed, also health education programs regarding PMS and other menstrual problems are very important and secondary schools should include them in the school curriculum to reduce the prevalence of such problems and more teaching methods to be used by future researchers in regards to PMS.