Dr. Mary Claire Haver

I'm like,

You don't think they're scared right now because they don't understand what's happening to their bodies?

Like we owe them this education.

We owe you guys centuries of research so that you understand what's happening.

We don't let a young girl go through puberty without someone holding her hand and explaining the basics.

It's so much earlier.

You can't, it's the same, right?

The brain is not firing on all cylinders and our neurotransmitters are directly affected, directly affected by these hormone changes.

Like how much serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine we make is dependent on what our estrogen, progesterone, testosterone levels are.

We can't get away from that.

So, and the brain was very, very used to this predictable ebb and flow.

And now we've taken that predictability away and it's very chaotic.

So,

What we've learned from studies done in Australia is if a woman is perimenopausal age and it's a new onset of anxiety or depression, you are better off.

You're going to have better results if you start her on menopause hormone therapy rather than starting her on a...

Okay.

Now, if she's on an antidepressant and was doing great, and then all of a sudden her symptoms are back with no new external changes, no one died, she's in the lost her job, you know, nothing crazy happened, adding in menopause hormone therapy to her SSRI, she is going to benefit more.

So the data is in the US, we double the rate of prescriptions for antidepressants across the menopause transition.

We go from 10% of the population to 20 for women.

So not every patient is a candidate.