171 - Finding hope with hormones after 20 years of struggling with my mental health

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine

4.8 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Content warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide Vanessa had always suffered with PMS and struggled with her mood and emotions after the birth of each of her children. After her fourth child was born, Vanessa’s mental health took a severe turn and she became suicidal. When her husband intervened and insisted she received specialist care, a psychiatrist realised how unwell Vanessa was and this was the beginning of an eighteen year journey of taking medication and receiving mental health support, including spells of inpatient care. It was all Vanessa could do to wake up every day and look after her children. Vanessa had wondered whether her mood was linked to her hormones as she would have 2 good weeks in every month before two bad weeks would inevitably creep in. In more recent years, friends persuaded her to see a menopause specialist and begin topping up her declining hormones and, as Vanessa explains, this has been lifechanging. Vanessa’s advice: You may not be well enough to go and ask for help yourself, allow family and friends to support you with this. Don’t always accept everything you’re told by healthcare professionals, challenge thoughts and negative attitudes towards mental health and the link with hormones. We develop lots of coping strategies to mask how we are really feeling. Don’t carry on hiding how you really are, speak to someone. Help is available if you are struggling. Please contact the Samaritans by phone on 116 123, download the Samaritans Self-Help app or email [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance.
0:30.0	On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based
0:36.6	information and advice about both the perimenopause and the
0:41.0	menopause.
0:45.9	So today on the podcast, I'm really excited and encouraged, actually, that I've managed to persuade
0:52.5	someone called Vanessa to come on the podcast today
0:56.4	to talk about her experience. So thanks very much, Vanessa, for coming today. Not at all. As I said
1:02.6	to you before, if there's somebody listening that I can help, I'm absolutely delighted. Yes. So,
1:07.5	well, this podcast probably comes with a tissue alert, but I'm sure you will help people.
1:12.2	And as many of you who've listened to my podcast or listen to some of my work before know that
1:16.2	I'm very keen and very committed to helping as many women as possible. But when it comes to mental
1:22.7	health and the perimenopause and menopause, it's really key and it's very high up in my
1:26.9	agenda because I'm very struck with the stories of how women's mental health can often deteriorate
1:33.2	when hormone levels reduce.
1:35.0	And that can start quite early, actually, after the birth of a baby when hormone levels
1:39.2	decline very quickly, when women have PMS, and then perimenopause and the menopause and some of us term it
1:46.1	as reproductive depression. So it's just the way our brains respond to changing hormone levels.
1:52.7	And we have receptors for estrogen and testosterone and progesterone in our brains. And there's a reason
1:58.9	that they're there because they help with the way the nerves
2:01.3	work, the way our brain works, the way even our brain metabolises and thinks and does all the
2:06.3	amazing thing our brains do. And for some women, not all, some women really struggle without their
2:12.3	hormones. And I see a lot of women in my clinic who have been given antidepressants, sometimes because
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