ABSTRACT
In Western medicine, premenstrual change is positioned as Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) or Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a fixed and unitary pathology within the woman, deemed to be caused by biomedical or psychological factors. This chapter explores the experiences of women who resist the common descriptor of the (PMS) self as out of control through taking up a position of agency in relation to negative premenstrual change. It describes the critical realist epistemology and a material-discursive-intrapsychic (MDI) model, it examines women's resistance of biomedical discourse associated with PMS, and their subsequent coping with negative premenstrual experience. Biomedical constructions of PMS leave women with only one avenue of coping in the face of negative premenstrual change: pharmaceutical interventions, with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) currently standing as the medical treatment of choice. Women's ability to resist the pathologization of premenstrual emotion and engage in coping strategies to reduce premenstrual distress was influenced by the responses of their partners, children, or close friends.
