Emotional problems are very common during menopause and intrusive thoughts, heightened fears and phobias and loss of humour are three of the lesser-known emotional symptoms you can experience.
Cognitive decline is common during the transition into menopause, including symptoms such as forgetfulness and delayed verbal memory, reduced verbal processing speed, and impaired verbal learning.
Changes in your hormones during menopause can impact your mental health as well as your physical health. You may experience feelings of anxiety, stress or even depression.
Dips in oestrogen levels cause the well-recognised symptoms of menopause, including hot flushes, mood changes, irritability, mental confusion and decreased energy. These things can all further contribute to hormone-related brain fog.
Headaches are more common around menopause due to fluctuating hormone levels. If you have had headaches in the past – especially if you get migraines – you may notice menopause headaches are more frequent or more severe.
Hormone changes that occur during pregnancy or menopause can affect memory and cause difficulty concentrating and a temporary decline in mental sharpness. This condition is often referred to as having brain fog.
In many women, menopause “brain fog” may be mild and go away on its own with time. More severe memory issues may cause you to neglect your personal hygiene, forget the name of familiar objects, or have difficulty following directions.
Perimenopause is a window of vulnerability for the development or worsening of mood and psychotic symptoms.
How long can menopause anxiety last? This is one of these things that is going to be different for everybody. For some women, it's going to just be for a short while, maybe a few months. For other women, it can be there in the background right through the whole of the menopause.
Menopause and anxiety. A common symptom that leaves you feeling stressed, fearful or tense. It can cause physical symptoms, like palpitations, and can make symptoms like hot flushes worse.
Imbalances in hormone levels leads to loss of focus, motivation and even constant mood swings. Hormonal anxiety could be extremely exhausting. In women it is essential to get your progesterone and oestrogen levels balanced and in men balanced levels of testosterone is crucial.
During menopause, it's common to experience mood changes such as irritability, sadness, lack of motivation, aggressiveness, problems focusing, stress, difficulty concentrating, and depression. Much like constant premenstrual syndrome (PMS), these effects can cause emotional strain.
Research into menopause shows that memory and information processing can be affected by changes in hormone levels. It is likely that treatments that lower oestrogen levels or block the action of oestrogen may affect your ability to think. They may also affect your concentration and ability to remember things.
Possible treatments for menopause-related anxiety can include hormones, hormone therapy, antidepressants, psychotherapy, or supplements for better mood. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective as a treatment for menopause.
Background: Menstrual psychosis is a broad term used to describe a number of disorders characterized by the acute onset of psychotic symptoms with brief duration, complete resolution of symptoms between episodes, with timing related to menses.
During a period of psychosis, a woman may come to believe things that are not true. These false beliefs are called delusions. She may believe, for instance, that her partner is cheating on her. She may see meanings in her partner's actions, gestures and tone of voice that are based on her worst fears, not on reality.
The women identified specific aspects of menopause that they associated with changes in mood. For example, physical symptoms of menopause were reported to have had an impact on symptoms of bipolar disorder for many interviewees, contributing to a sense of a loss of control over bipolar disorder during this time.
Conclusions: Compared to women with menopausal age of 50-51 years, women with premature menopause (<40 years) had around 35% higher risk of having all-cause dementia, and women with early menopause (<45 years) were 1.3 times more likely to experience presenile dementia before age 65 years.
In postmenopause, symptoms of menopause may have eased or stopped entirely, but some women continue to have symptoms for longer. The change in your body's hormones however is a sign to keep looking after your health and wellbeing, and be mindful to listen to your body.
It's common to experience lapses in memory and concentration during the early and middle stages of menopause. This menopausal memory & concentration loss can be alarming. One major change to the body that may cause normal forgetfulness during menopause is a reduction in the body's hormone levels.
Intrusive thoughts are often triggered by stress or anxiety. They may also be a short-term problem brought on by biological factors, such as hormone shifts.
Common ones include tension headaches, migraines, conditions that affect the sinuses, and ear infections. Abnormal or severe head pressure is sometimes a sign of a serious medical condition, such as a brain tumor or aneurysm.
As perimenopause causes your hormones to fluctuate, and menopause causes your hormones to decrease, you may experience rapid, unexplainable mood changes. Increased feelings of irritability, nervousness, and sadness may make you feel like you're losing your mind, but there's no need to panic.