Women beginning menopause are more likely to develop new-onset major depression than are women the same age who are not yet making the transition to menopause, reported Dr. Lee S. Cohen and his associates in the Harvard Study of Moods and Cycles.
A cross-sectional sample of 460 women aged 36–45 years was prospectively followed every 6 months for 59–92 months. A total of 326 of the women entered menopause during the study, said Dr. Cohen and his associates at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women's Hospital, all in Boston. None of the women had a history of major depression.
The rate of new-onset major depression was 16.6% in the menopausal women, compared with 9.5% in those who had not yet entered menopause, after the data had been adjusted to account for age at study enrollment and history of negative life events (Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 2006;63:385–90).
This correlation between onset of depression and transition to menopause was noted both in women who used hormone therapy and in those who did not.
New-onset depression was more likely to develop in women who reported vasomotor symptoms than in those who did not. Hot flushes may disrupt sleep “enough to adversely affect daytime functioning and to impact quality of life,” the investigators said. Alternatively, “abrupt changes in neuromodulatory function and/or in reproductive-hormone levels could contribute to the constellation of mood and vasomotor symptoms.”