You’d think that hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, vaginal dryness, a loss of libido and mood swings would be enough for women to deal with. But unfortunately, menopause and depression are strongly linked.
In this post, we’ll take a look at how menopause and depression feed into one another, why it happens and what you can do at home to look after your mental health during menopause and perimenopause.
As you transition into perimenopause and menopause, you may feel like you’re on an emotional rollercoaster, featuring inversions of rage, loop-the-loops of laughter and tears and sudden launches of extreme feelings.
Of course, the changes in your hormone levels can cause you to feel emotionally unsettled. However, you’re also having to deal with a range of other perimenopause and menopause symptoms which can be relentless and unbearable.
When this happens, it doesn’t take a genius to see how strongly linked menopause and depression are.
When women experience drastic and sudden hormone changes like during perimenopause, puberty, pregnancy, postpartum and even during monthly cycles, mental health experts state that they’re at a higher risk of developing depression. On average, this is why women are 50% more likely to suffer with depression in their life than men.
People refer to “menopause” as though it’s a long period of time that takes over people’s lives. In actuality, though, menopause is just one day.
You have officially reached menopause when you have not had any vaginal bleeding - no matter how light; even spotting counts - for 12 months in a row.
If you track 11 months of no bleeding but then you begin spotting, your tracker starts again and you won’t have officially reached menopause for - at the minimum - another 12 months.
So, when we talk about menopause and depression, we’re often referring to perimenopause instead.
In perimenopause, you experience the menopause symptoms you know so much about, including hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, weight gain and more.
Perimenopause sees a drastic change to your reproductive hormones which trigger many of those symptoms, including making you more vulnerable to developing depression.
Here’s how.