Menopause & Suicide

When a woman begins entering menopause a lot of things in her body change. Hormone levels alter, menstruation stops, and moods can swing, among other side effects. However, the chemical imbalances brought on by menopause can lead to a woman becoming clinically depressed. If the depression continues, then suicide can become a genuine risk factor for the woman suffering from menopause-induced depression.

Menopause

• When a woman is born, she has only a finite number of eggs in her ovaries. The ovaries produce hormones such as progesterone and estrogen that manage her cycle of menstruation and ovulation, where eggs are dropped and ready to be fertilized. Menopause is when a woman no longer produces eggs, whether because her body simply has no more or because of some other cause such as a hysterectomy or injury to the ovaries.

Depression

• Depression is a mental disorder which has been linked to neurotransmitters in the brain. An imbalance of these chemicals can lead to a severely depressed mood (lasting more than two weeks). Feelings of sadness, futility and hopelessness are common during depression. Depression can lead to physical ailments, a drop in the person's immune system and isolation, and people have been known to commit suicide while under the effects of depression.

Menopausal Depression

• Oftentimes, women going through menopause suffer from depression. It's most likely to occur as menopause is beginning and a woman's reproductive system is shutting down. While the exact causes aren't known, there are two schools of thought on why menopause causes depression. The first is that women's lives are changing, and the burden of no longer being able to bear children from their own eggs on top of all the pressures of work, family and life in general can lead to depression. The other school of thought is that the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which are produced in lowered amounts during menopause, can affect the seratonin levels in a woman's brain and lead to depression. There has been evidence to show support for both, and a combination of factors likely causes menopausal depression in some women.

Risk

• There are a number of factors for determining women who are at risk for developing depression during menopause. Women with a history of mood disorders, particularly depression, are at risk. Women who have gone through surgical menopause are at a much higher risk of depression due to the immediate drop in hormone output. Women who smoke, have children or are under a great deal of stress may also develop depression during menopause.

Treatment

• Menopausal depression is unique in that it only happens to women undergoing this certain type of life change. As such, approaches like psychotherapy and the prescription of anti-depressant medication are both still options for treatment. Since one school of thought claims that menopausal depression comes from an imbalance of hormones like estrogen and progesterone though, hormone therapy is also used to raise the levels of these hormones to combat menopausal depression.