PMDD patients scored significantly higher on somatic trait anxiety, psychic trait anxiety, embitterment, trait irritability, mistrust, and detachment compared to healthy control subjects (Table 2).
Women with PMDD displayed higher levels of neuroticism-related personality traits (psychic trait anxiety, somatic trait anxiety, embitterment, stress susceptibility and mistrust) than healthy controls, and these effects were most prominent in women with more severe luteal phase symptoms.
It has 91 items and yields 13 personality scales: somatic trait anxiety, psychic trait anxiety, stress susceptibility, lack of assertiveness, impulsiveness, adventure seeking, detachment, social desirability, embitterment, trait irritability, mistrust, verbal trait aggression and physical aggression.
There were no significant differences between the five study groups for any of the traits studied ("Somatic Trait Anxiety", "Psychic Trait Anxiety", "Stress Susceptibility", "Detachment" and "Social Desirability") at any of the occasions.
The somatic trait anxiety (SSP-STA) and psychic trait anxiety (SSP-PSTA) are two subscales of Swedish Universities Scales of Personalities [ 39] and were used to measure tendencies to feeling tense, restless, and worried.
The main finding of the present study was that PMDD patients displayed increased scores of psychic trait anxiety, somatic trait anxiety, embitterment, stress susceptibility, and mistrust compared to control subjects.
High-severity PMDD patients had higher scores on somatic trait anxiety, psychic trait anxiety, embitterment and mistrust as compared to control subjects (Table 3), whereas low-severity PMDD patients only scored higher on the detachment scale than control subjects.
Moreover, PMDD patients who carried the short allele for 5-HTTLPR displayed increased scores of psychic trait anxiety and lack of assertiveness in comparison with PMDD patients who were homozygous carriers of the long allele.
Furthermore, PMDD patients with at least one copy of the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism scored higher on psychic trait anxiety and lack of assertiveness than PMDD patients who were homozygous for the long allele.
PMDD patients who carried the short allele for 5-HTTLPR displayed increased scores of psychic trait anxiety and lack of assertiveness in comparison with PMDD patients who were homozygous carriers of the long allele.
