Teaching coping skills and self-administered acupressure reduced premenstrual stress equally, offering two effective non-drug approaches for university students.
This experimental study enrolled university students with moderate or severe premenstrual symptoms and assigned them to coping-skills training, acupressure, or a control group. The coping-skills group attended weekly teaching sessions for five weeks, while the acupressure group applied pressure twice daily to a point on the inner lower leg for three months. Participants completed questionnaires on premenstrual stress and coping styles before the interventions and three months later, and analyses accounted for baseline differences and relevant participant characteristics.
Both coping-skills training and acupressure produced lower premenstrual stress than the control condition, with no meaningful difference in effectiveness between the two interventions. Coping-skills training also improved task-focused and avoidance-focused coping while reducing emotion-focused coping, suggesting that psychological education may lessen symptoms partly by changing how participants manage stress.
