Why You Suffer and What You Can Do About Menopause Mood Swings
When you suffer from menopause and mood swing symptoms you want to know what to do to make your symptoms go away. But it is equally important to understand the reasons for your symptoms and to know when to get help.
Only when you understand that you don’t need professional help, check the treatments for your menopause mood swings. You will find the link at the end of the page.
Often mood swings appear in perimenopause and are especially wild for women who had severe PMS symptoms. You will see, that the reason for this connection is a hormone imbalance.
Mild to wild mood swings often occur about 5 days before women start their monthly period. This is one of the classic signs of PMS (now called Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder). The reason is a drop in estrogen at this time of the cycle.
The drop in estrogen is also the reason for the mood swings during the menopause transition. During perimenopause they can be especially nasty because of the widely and frequently fluctuating estrogen levels.
Estrogen influences serotonin, a key neurotransmitter that regulates your mood. When estrogen levels drop, serotonin levels drop as well which causes feelings of sadness, gloom and doom.
Take these hormonal changes and the other things that are going on in you life during menopause, and it is little wonder that you don’t know if you are coming or going.
Serotonin levels also are influenced by stress, which make your mood swings even worse. Hot flashes and night sweats would make anybody cranky and irritable. Sleep problems, fuzzy thinking and some of the other menopause symptoms are all contributing to your irritability and mood swings.
Menopause and Mood Swings versus Bipolar Disorder
So what are mood swings and how are they different from bipolar disorder, a severe but treatable illness?
Menopause mood swings are characterized by a lack of emotional stability. You have no control over the feelings of sadness, you break out in tears without reason, and snap at people without any provocation. A short while later, you feel that everything is fine and wonder what just happened.
Your family thinks that you are difficult to live with and you are getting more and more anxious that they are right. Welcome to the world of menopause hormone fluctuations.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by going between two extreme mood swings: Mania and Depression. Mania is characterized by restlessness, racing thoughts, euphoria, extreme irritability and poor judgment. Depression has symptoms of profound sadness, pessimism, and feeling totally worthless and hopeless. The episodes last from days to weeks, much longer than menopause and mood swings.
It is often difficult to diagnose bipolar disorder in women because women tend to have less severe manic episodes but more severe and longer episodes of depression than men.
A proper diagnosis is the key to successful treatment. Often women are diagnosed with depression, when their severe menopause mood swings are actually a symptom of bipolar disorder. Prescriptions for depression may make some of the symptoms even worse.
Your previous health history can give you clues about your risk of developing bipolar disorder. Women who had episodes of severe mood swings, or had several episodes of depression prior to menopause, are more likely to develop bipolar disorder triggered by hormone changes. There is also a strong genetic component to these illnesses.
If the symptoms are caused by the hormone changes, hormone therapy alone might help.
In some cases, drug therapy is indicated, sometimes in conjunction with hormone therapy or psychotherapy. Finding the best drug to treat bipolar disorder in women can be difficult and may take a while.
There are many individual factors involved that will react differently with the various classes of drugs. You may have to go through several prescriptions before your mood is stabilized.
Drugs for mood disorders are best prescribed and supervised by specialists. Some of the larger universities and hospitals have centers for women’s mood disorders where you can get treatment from doctors that understand the hormone connection between menopause and mood swings.
Seek professional help if your menopause and mood swings symptoms cause problems in your daily functioning. Therapy (drug or counseling) can help you to get back to normal functioning.
Read more: Menopause and Mood Swings – Treatments and Causes