[The medicalization of feminine suffering: premenstrual dysphoric disorder]

In this paper we'll try to show some of the tensions existing in our field related to gender issue, focusing on the premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). We'll try to give some examples of the difficulties Psychiatry has when trying to understand what it is called a mental illness and which are its internal and external determinants from a gender perspective. We will display two different approximations. First of all, the official PMDD story will be narrated, the one told by medical journals, that basing on a positivist side of the scientific knowledge evolution, avoids gender issues. Then we'll describe a critical perspective, which far from denying the medical model it tries to complement it with social sciences contributions , so female suffering can be appreciated in its own singularity and extension. This only can be possible by including gender perspective in Psychiatry practice. We can't expect gender perspective to be fully spread out in the Psychiatry field when in the whole social life there is a big difficulty in visualizing gender concept among the different areas of every day life.