Today on my podcast I've got Dr. Gareth Jarvis, who is a psychiatrist who prescribes hormones.

There's not many of those around. He's learnt a lot from his wife, Rachel, who actually works with us in the clinic.

And he talks about how important it is to think about hormones and mental health.

Think about how important it is for us to be diagnosing properly in

psychiatry and thinking about the important roles of hormones in our brains. So Gareth, thank you so

much for coming today. It's always great having somebody who like, didn't really know about hormones at medical school

and has just sort of seen the light almost. But you are a psychiatrist and I really enjoyed

psychiatry. I did it in North Manchester, a very deprived area, but it was a really good unit actually,

very cohesive. The doctors really worked together well. My other students were really quite

jealous that we were there at the time. We had eight weeks, which isn't long, but it is quite

a good chunk of time compared to like one week of ophthalmology, I think,

that I did. But I've used a lot of my psychiatry training throughout, especially being a GP.

But I never thought about the association of hormones and mental health, whereas every day I think

about it now. And you think about it more now, don't you? I do. And I guess

probably worth me saying full disclosure right up at the top of the podcast that my wife Rachel

as a GP works for Newston Health. And she's amazing. And she's really helped bring me towards the evidence base around menopause

because I'll admit, Louisa, I kept myself woefully poor not up to date in this area for many

years.

It was a footnote at medical school.

When I was up there in Edinburgh, we maybe had a day on it. I can't really, it's so much back in the midst of time now. And throughout my psychiatry training, again, at best of footnote at any point was menopause discussed.

Wonderful, isn't it? And yet I look at it now and think, I can't believe that we haven haven't with how little attention was paid to it

throughout that time. I mean, if I look back at medical school, that was around the time

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