Menstrual cycles can affect day-to-day suicide risk, UIC study finds

CHICAGO — When Tory Eisenlohr-Moul was training as a therapist, she saw people who had chronic suicidal thoughts — thoughts that would abruptly change from week to week. But when one of Eisenlohr-Moul’s patients mentioned her menstrual cycle was impacting her symptoms, the clinical psychologist homed in on how menses might be part of the equation.

“I started having people track their mood symptoms against their menstrual cycle and it seemed, for a lot of my patients, this was a really important reason that their suicidal thoughts and depression were changing week to week,” said the associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago. “I thought if we had some evidence that this was common then maybe we could do something about it.”

Eisenlohr-Moul led researchers to study how suicidal thoughts fluctuate across the menstrual cycle. The result is a longitudinal study, in December, where Eisenlohr-Moul, postdoctoral researcher and clinical psychologist Jaclyn Ross,