Are violence and aggression linked to PMDD?
Women with PMDD may be angry and irritable, but this is seldom associated with actual violent or aggressive acts. There may be very rare exceptions, especially if a woman is temperamentally predisposed to violence or aggression. There was a report of a woman with previously unexplained recurrent violent behavior (including stabbing a woman to death), in whom all of the acts occurred during the premenstrual phase of her cycle. There have been cases of child abuse in which the abuse was apparently a premenstrual occurrence. It’s possible that PMDD may play a role in other forms of abuse as well. While most violent or aggressive behavior has nothing to do with PMDD, it is always worth exploring the possibility of an association.
