Speak to any woman in the perils of midlife hormonal changes and you begin to wonder how far we’ve really come. In ancient Greece, one floating theory was women suffered ‘hysteria’ because their empty uterus was in mourning. By the 1700s, physicians thought women’s brains were controlled by their ovaries.
Schlep forward slightly to the Victorian era and ‘climacteric insanity’ was a one-way ticket to an asylum (particularly if you were also partial to a glass or two). And now? Women are still more likely to be offered anxiety or depression medication than hormonal therapy for perimenopausal symptoms. In fact, the stats show that, regardless of what prompts a GP visit, we face higher odds of being diagnosed with a mental health condition than a man, even if we go in with identical physical complaints. It begs the question – is the needle still stuck on hysteria?
In all fairness, we are pretty quick to declare ourselves bonkers when things aren’t ticking along as they used to. “I suddenly felt so anxious about everything,” says mother-oftwo Lucy Brooks, whose periods unexpectedly stopped at age 42.
“I very swiftly went from being active, happy and gung-ho, and managing kids, marriage and my own business, to not being able to cope with anything. My sleep went to pot. I
