Menstrual Psychosis
This is a comparatively uncommon form of severe mental illness, with the following characteristics:
- Abrupt onset against a background of normality.
- Brief duration, with full recovery.
- Psychotic features such as confusion, mutism and stupor, delusions, hallucinations or a manic syndrome. Premenstrual tension, premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual (late luteal phase) depression or dysphoric disorder or menstrual mood disorder do not qualify.
- A circa-mensual (approximately monthly) periodicity, in rhythm with the menstrual cycle.
Read more about Menstrual Psychosis: History, Examples, Clinical Features, Epidemiology, Course, Cause, Treatment
Famous quotes containing the words menstrual and/or psychosis:
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“My safe, safe psychosis is broken.
It was hard.
It was made of stone.
It covered my face like a mask.
But it has cracked.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)