Mental Illness

The essential features are symptoms such as markedly depressed mood, marked anxiety, marked affective liability and decreased interest in activities. These symptoms have regularly occurred during the last week of luteal phase in most menstrual cycle during the past year. The symptoms begin to remit with in a few a days of the onset of menses (the follicular phase) and are always absent in the week following menses.

Five (or more) of the symptoms must have been present: 1) feeling sad, hopeless or self-deprecating; 2) feeling tense, anxious; 3) marked liability of mood interspersed with frequent tearfulness; 4) persistent irritability, anger and increased interpersonal conflicts; 5) decreased interest in usual activities; 6) difficulty concentrating; 7) feeling fatigued, lethargic or lacking in energy; 8) marked change in appetite, which may be associated with binge eating or craving certain food; 9) Hypersomnia or insomnia; 10) physical symptoms such as breast tenderness or swelling, headaches or sensation of bloating or weight gain with tightness of fit of clothing, shoes or rings.
[P 771 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 4th edition]