A Comparative Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Acupressure Versus Reflexology on Pre-Menstrual Syndrome Among Adolesecent Girls in Selected Schools at Erode, Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Background: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a recurrent appearance of psychological (e.g. irritability) and physical (e.g. headache) symptoms that occurs during luteal phase of the menstrual cycles and remits shortly after the beginning of menses and during the follicular phase. Aim: To assess the effectiveness of acupressure Vs reflexology on premenstrual syndrome among adolescent girls. Methods: True experimental design was used. Multistage sampling technique was adopted to select the 250 adolescent girls. Assessment of level of premenstrual syndrome was measured by Premenstrual Syndrome Scale (PMSS). After pretest, acupressure (experimental group I) and reflexology (experimental group II) intervention was given to the adolescent girls from fourth day of menstruation cycle and continued for 8 weeks for the duration of 20 minutes once in a week. Post test was conducted after 8 weeks of intervention (i.e., during 3rd menstrual cycle) by using same pretest scale. Results: Acupressure and reflexology is an intervention in reducing premenstrual syndrome as the pretest mean premenstrual syndrome score (161.98 ± 6.63, which is 81%) and (160.61± 7.15, which is 80%) was less than the post test mean premenstrual syndrome score (82.48 ± 4.23, which is 41%) and (76.74 ± 5.2, which is 38%) in experimental group I and II, respectively. The calculated paired ‘t’ II. Conclusion: Reflexology was more effective than acupressure on premenstrual syndrome among adolescent girls. The result of the study showed that regular practice of acupressure and reflexology would be beneficial in reducing the premenstrual syndrome.