Stop Treating Midlife Women with 'Antidepressants'
Imagine my horror, as I entered the stage of life that many call ‘perimenopause’, to discover from friends and peers, (and later my own conversation with a gynaecologist), at a similar stage, that it is a common place practice for GPs to prescribe various types of psychiatric drug to, apparently, deal with symptoms of perimenopause.
By Emma Jaynes
Yup, my women friends going along to their GPs, describing their symptoms, and being told that ‘antidepressants will help with that’.
Well, there are a number of major issues I have with this:
Fristly, decades of research show us that, so called, antidepressant medications, do not do what they claim to do anyway. In a nutshell, there is no chemical imbalance and, therefore, no chemical cure for depression and other such labelled states.
If you are in any doubt about this, take a look at my long article ** which has a comprehensive reference list, and talks more about the drugs and their effects.
Secondly, many women don’t really know what they are being prescribed and why.
Women are often given the impression that the drugs they are given may help with mood swings or hot flushes, but has anyone asked about the mechanism of action?
There is an interesting account in Dr James Davies’ book ‘Cracked’ (pgs 78-80), about how Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, rebranded the infamous ‘antidepressant’ drug Prozac, called it ‘Serafem’, made the tablet pink, and marketed it for ‘Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a condition which fulfils no scientific criteria whatsoever, for existence.
Thirdly, in not knowing very much about what, and why, they are being prescribed, many women are inherently unaware of the potential harm that ‘antidepressant’ drugs can cause.
On top of all the other challenges many midlife women can face, I am wondering if adverse effects including weight gain, 
loss of libido, increased anxiety, and emotional numbness, are things that women really want added to their plate at this time. Or even if these effects are correctly attributed to the drug, or merely passed off as a ‘symptom of perimenopause’.
It is a minefield, and many people are unaware of the long-term implications of coming off the drugs. There are very very few practitioners of any description, outside of the prescribed harm community, who have any idea how to do this safely and, even then, it needs to be well supported and constantly monitored. *
Lastly, and I keep banging on about this, the challenges of midlife women – perimenopause/ menopause etc.. – are not medical illnesses that need treatment with drugs.
Nature put this stage of life there for a reason and, whilst I might list some of the things I constitute as reasons (see article), each individual woman can learn to tune into her own body, rhythms, and cycles, and discern whatever meaning those experiences have for her.
This is not to downplay the fact that this time of life can feel physically and emotionally very difficult for some women but, as I have written elsewhere, it is possible to move into and through this life stage in a way that makes sense out of it and lands you up exactly where you have always wanted to be in your life.
At times of change, things from the past that have not been adequately resolved, can surface. These might include past issues or traumas from childhood or earlier in life, they might even be relationship issues that we have shelved and not looked at. I believe the degree to which we suffer at midlife, is the degree to which we need to re-address these things and is equivalent to the degree to which our life can change for the better.
Rather than becoming totally overwhelmed or even controlled by these feelings or bodily experiences, we can choose to view it as an opportunity to settle things with our past, address trauma, reconfigure relationships where necessary, and deal with our sense of personal power, confidence, and agency in the world. In short, it is an opportunity to live the second half of your life, unburdened by the hang-ups that keep us stuck, once and for all !
The medicalisation of normal, natural, processes, across the board, is a big issue that cannot be underestimated. It denies us the ability to consciously connect with our innate beauty as human beings and the full spectrum of experiences that gives us, nice or nasty. It is through connecting with our true nature, that we begin to feel whole – that wholeness that we all intuitively seek and often try to get by distracting with things that are eternal to ourselves.
The prescribing of antidepressants to midlife women (and, IMO anyone), is not about your health, it is about pharma profits – end of.
Ask yourselves, why are we not talking about the positive aspects of midlife, for women, why are we not going out of our way to empower women at this time of life?
What would be most rewarding for you at this time? How would it feel to go through this stage and come out the other side wise, confident, powerful, and clear of all the baggage that you have gathered throughout this journey?
Do comment or email me with your thoughts 🙂
*NB You must NEVER just come off psychiatric medications. They must always be tapered, with support from someone who has experience in doing this, and this may or may not be the person who prescribed them to you.
If you would like support to turn your life around right now, start by downloading the free Springboard to Success workbook where you can get a feel for the work – click the button below 🙂
