FEMALE MENTAL HEALTH AND REPRODUCTIVE CYCLE: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

This article aims to reflect critically on the production in the literature regarding the mental illness of women in relation to the female reproductive cycle, with emphasis on social markers such as race and social class. It is an excerpt from the literature review of a thesis that selected 80 articles, corresponding to the category “reproductive cycle”, totaling 22 articles. In the introduction, we make a historical return to the association of the reproductive cycle with female mental health, arising from an essentialist reading of women and the medicalization of their bodies. As a theoretical framework, we adopted Social Constructionist Psychology and Intersectional Feminism. The research was carried out at the Virtual Health Library and is characterized as an integrative literature review. In the selection, we considered articles in English, Portuguese and Spanish from 2014 to 2018. The texts were divided into sub-themes related to the objective of the article, considering the mental disorder and some period of the female reproductive cycle. The review's findings focus on the social determinants involved in female illness, such as poverty, work overload and violence. We conclude that the study information allows to de-essentialize female mental illness, indicating that the social attributions to women have been a source of illness for them.