Mental Health Services
Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-25
============================================================

Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister of State and appreciate her commitment to this. It is brilliant that Shauna has spoken out publicly about this but it should never take women having to expose such personal things in public to get action. Will PMDD specifically be in the HSE campaign the Minister of State mentioned? While I recognise GPs are the first port of call and pathway for many people, the reality is many GPs across the country do not know this condition in detail and are not treating women or outlining the right pathways.
I also want to link that to the question of psychiatric care. Maybe that will work for some but psychiatric care is not necessarily the best step for hormonal imbalance, which is what PMDD is. The idea of institutionalising someone with psychiatric care, or even of them referring themselves to an institution, seems absolutely obscene. It is not getting the point. It is an outdated form of medicine that does not respond to the modern needs of women. That is why I mentioned HRT. I would love if the Minister of State would take that back to the Department for it to be taken seriously as a pathway we should explore. HRT works amazingly for certain things. Postnatal depression can also be treated with HRT.
On SPHE, is that a new update in the school curriculum? PMDD is mentioned in that curriculum but the section on it is minute and does not provide enough to young girls experiencing this. It is about having an open conversation. Between 6% and 8% - almost one in ten women - suffer from this.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-11-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:21+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-25