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Background

Menstrual-cycle-related affective symptoms arise due to abnormal neurobiological sensitivity to normal hormone fluctuations. Several studies report that stressors increase cyclical affective changes, but suffer from methodological limitations (ie, cross-sectional, limited stressor measurement, small samples). Therefore, we examined whether comprehensively measured lifetime stressor exposure predicts prospective affective cyclicity in a large transdiagnostic psychiatric sample. We hypothesized that greater stressor exposure—specifically danger-related (as compared to loss)—would predict greater (1) mean levels and (2) perimenstrual changes in negative affect.

Methods

124 female psychiatric outpatients completed the Stress and Adversity Inventory (STRAIN), a comprehensive measure of lifetime stressor exposure; they also provided daily ratings of negative affect across 2-3 cycles (8382 reports …