Depression and Perimenopause
What Is the Relationship Between Perimenopause and Depression?
Janet Settle MD reporting on four recent journal articles on depressive symptoms during the menopausal transition.
Depression during the menopausal transition is a hot (flash) topic! Google scholar lists 8730 results for “depression AND menopause” in 2015-16 alone. The findings of past studies have been mixed, but two new studies support the finding that depressive symptoms are more common during the menopausal transition. The definition of menopause is one year without a period. The average age of menopause is 51. The ‘menopause transition,’ during which periods are irregular but not absent, lasts an average of 4 years.
”Between 15% and 50% of women experience depressive symptoms during the menopausal transition; in 15% to 30% of perimenopausal women, they are severe enough to be regarded as a depressive disorder (Toffol, 2015).”