Menopause Treatment And Depression

Menopause treatment is not the same thing as depression treatment, despite the fact that depression can be one of the symptoms associated with menopause and peri-menopause. Many of the mood alterations that take place during this time are natural, normal results of fluctuations in hormones, which may be addressed with diet or hormone therapy rather than intense depression therapy.

This means, of course, that drug products that would ordinarily be prescribed for depression might not deal with the real cause of the depression, whatever degree of relief they might bring.

Menopause treatment, when dealing with depression, always needs to take into account the fact that estrogen plays some role in mood enhancement, while progesterone has a more destabilizing effect. Current treatments for transitional menopause symptoms generally involve some sort of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Yet many doctors recognize that if a woman has had depressive episodes in the past, or has even had post partum depression treatment at some point, HRT can in fact worsen the risk of depression when entering the menopausal phase.

Sometimes women really do need HRT as part of their menopause treatment, even if it might possibly raise the risk of depression. In such cases, rather than make them suffer, the usual methods of depression therapy should be instituted. These would include antidepressant prescriptions to counterbalance possible depressive effects of the hormone treatments. Whatever it takes to make a woman’s transition into menopause as normal as possible, including all available health treatments, need to be explored.

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