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Stressful Parental-Bonding Exaggerates the Functional and Emotional Disturbances of Primary Dysmenorrhea

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Abstract

Background

Some evidence suggests that women with primary dysmenorrhea (or painful period) often have traumatic experience with parental attachments, but the exact relationship is still unclear.

Purpose

This study aims to investigate associations between styles of the parental bonding and the detailed aspects of the disorder in Chinese university-student women.

Methods

From university-student women, we have invited 50 primary dysmenorrhea patients and 111 healthy volunteers, to undergo tests of the Functional and Emotional Measure of Dysmenorrhea (FEMD), the Family Relationship Questionnaire (FRQ), and the visual analogue scale for the pain intensity experienced.

Results

Besides the high scores of the FEMD Functional and Emotional scales, the dysmenorrhea patients also scored significantly higher than the healthy controls on the FRQ scales of Paternal Dominance and Maternal Abuse. In patients, the FEMD Emotional scale was negatively predicted by the Paternal Freedom Release scale, and the FEMD Functional scale was positively predicted by the Maternal Dominance scale.

Conclusions

Inappropriate parental bonding or chronic traumatic attachment styles have respective relationships with the functional and emotional disturbances experienced by the primary dysmenorrhea patients.

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Acknowledgments

The study was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91132715) to the correspondent author (Dr W Wang) and from the 2013 Exploratory Experiments of Public Health for Undergraduates of Zhejiang University to KX. KX, LC, and LF contributed equally to the work described in the paper.

Conflict of interest

Regarding research work described in the paper, each one of our coauthors, Kai Xu, Liuxi Chen, Lingyun Fu, Shaofang Xu, Hongying Fan, Qianqian Gao, You Xu, and Wei Wang, declares that there is no conflict of interest, has conformed to the Helsinki Declaration concerning human rights and informed consent, and has followed correct procedures concerning treatment of humans in research.

Authors’ contribution

Study concept and design: WW. Acquisition of data: KX, LC, LF, SX, HF, QG, and YX. Analysis and interpretation of data: KX, LC, and LF. Writing the draft of the manuscript: KX, LC, LF, and WW.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry/ School of Public Health, Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Yuhangtang Road 866, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310058, China

    Kai Xu, Liuxi Chen, Lingyun Fu, Shaofang Xu, Hongying Fan, Qianqian Gao, You Xu & Wei Wang

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  1. Kai Xu
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Correspondence to Wei Wang.

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Xu, K., Chen, L., Fu, L. et al. Stressful Parental-Bonding Exaggerates the Functional and Emotional Disturbances of Primary Dysmenorrhea. Int.J. Behav. Med. 23, 458–463 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-015-9504-0

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