Women who haven't suffered from depression earlier have a higher risk of developing depressive symptoms around menopause. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA, found that the transition to menopause is often considered a high-risk period for depressive symptoms, yet scientific evidence supporting this association is lacking. In an 8-year study, the researchers tracked 231 women who were about to enter menopause, none of whom had any history of depression up to the time they enrolled. The Center for Epidemiological Studies of Depression (CED-D) scale was used to assess depressive symptoms during follow-up. The probability of a high CES-D score (at least 16) was four-fold greater during the menopausal transition than during the pre-menopausal phase. Similarly, entering menopause was tied to a more than doubled risk of being diagnosed with a depressive disorder. In a similar study, researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA, looked at the impact of the menopausal transition on depressive symptoms in 460 women between 36 and 45 years old with no history of depression. During more than 3 years of follow-up, 134 women remained pre-menopausal and the remainder entered menopause. The menopausal group was twice as likely to experience significant depressive symptoms as compared to the pre-menopausal group. A slightly higher risk was noted in menopausal women who reported symptoms of hot flashes. Despite the fact that most women do not develop depression during the menopausal transition, the findings suggest that relative to women who remain pre-menopausal, similarly aged women who begin the transition to menopause appear to be at an increased risk for the first onset of depression even in the absence of a history of depression.
Archives of General Psychiatry,
April 2006