A construção da síndrome pré-menstrual / The social construction of premenstraul syndrome
AUTOR(ES)
Miriam Oliveira Mariano
FONTE
IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
23/03/2012
RESUMO
This research aims at putting in doubt the premenstrual syndrome (PMS) problem as an ahistorical biomedical entity made evident from the fulfilling of diagnostic criteria. The starting point is the hypothesis that the biomedical model for the explanation of PMS incorporates and reproduces the existing social patterns that insist in stereotypical views of genders due to the biological differentiation of sexes. Upon reflecting about the construction of the scientific fact and the prevalence of the biomedical statement in the understanding of the female body, emotion and behavior, we analyzed historical changes of this vision, regarded as reductionist. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the essence of womanhood was located in the womb; from the mid 19th century, the ovaries began to be considered the root of womens diseases, including nervous and mental ones. At the beginning of the 20th century a change in the biomedical statements started to happen and the essence of womanhood was then located in chemical substances denominated hormones. Since then the female body became more and more represented as one controlled by hormones, reifying the belief that women are cyclical and in some moments, unstable, irrational and, therefore, not trustworthy. This emphasis on hormones coincides with the first description, in 1931, of what was called premenstrual tension. In the 1950s, the terminology changed to premenstrual syndrome. Initially, it was understood as being directly produced by the female hormones, but there is no empirical evidence that proves this hypothesis. After 80 years of research, no biological marker or biochemical test that could be used for this diagnosis has been found. The very diagnostic criteria are not consensual among researchers, as more than 200 symptoms that take place in a variable and inconstant manner have been described. The etiopathogenic mechanism is still not known and some authors question the very existence of the syndrome as a biomedical entity and present feminist and socio-cultural views for the understanding of the phenomenon. A great number of women, however, claim to have PMT (most common nonprofessional nomenclature). In order to expand this subject and increase our understanding, the analysis of recent biomedical articles (2000 to 2011) about PMS was confronted with the direct or indirect experience of PMT in women of the average general population. With this in mind, scientific articles about PMS, selected from cited research in PubMed - an online search engine tool - were analyzed, and in depth, open and semi-structured individual interviews were performed with women in reproductive age, who were selected by using the sampling system known as snow ball. After analyzing the articles, as well as the interviews, we conclude that in spite of common assumptions that biology determines natural and universal gender differences between men and women the PMS of the biomedical articles and womens PMT do not match. Without undermining the unpleasant sensations, the problems, and the suffering of women that claim to have PMT, the results of this study point to a complex reality which requires more research aiming at reaching less reductionist descriptions of these female experiences
ASSUNTO(S)
biomedicine woman hormone síndrome pré-menstrual tensão pré-menstrual biomedicina mulher hormônio saude coletiva premenstrual syndrome premenstrual tension
