Changes in premenstrual symptoms and irrational thinking following cognitive-behavioral coping skills training.

Women reporting severe premenstrual symptoms were allocated nonrandomly to a cognitive-behavioral coping skills treatment (n = 13), a nonspecific treatment (n = 12), or a waiting-list group (n = 12). Repeated measures analyses of variance showed that, compared with control subjects, the coping skills group reported significant reductions in premenstrual symptomatology and irrational thinking at posttreatment and at 9-month follow-up. There were no significant differences between the waiting-list and control intervention groups at any time of testing. It was suggested that the increased irrationality reported at pretreatment should be viewed not as a "cause" of premenstrual problems but as a product of the stresses experienced in the premenstruum phase. The findings of this study indicated that cognitive-behavioral coping skills treatments can reduce the negative effects of premenstrual symptoms and that those reductions can be maintained over time.