Pandemic has increased mental and physical health toll of menopause, warns Leeds GP

Yorkshire doctor Clare Spencer was so concerned about what has been happening during the lockdowns that she and Helen Normoyle, her partner in a new online clinic, My Menopause Centre, commissioned some research to find out the true extent of the problem.

The findings confirmed their fears.

It revealed that Covid has increased the mental health toll of the menopause for almost half of those going through it (47 per cent), with a further third (32 per cent) experiencing exacerbated physical symptoms.

“This research reinforces everything I’ve seen since the pandemic started, revealing how Covid-19 has impacted women’s experiences of the menopause, in particular, how reduced support and access to friends has exacerbated the challenges menopausal women face,” says Clare, who is a menopause specialist and Leeds GP.

“We need to get past this notion that menopause only affects those experiencing it. It affects everyone, and its impact is far reaching from our homes to our workplaces.

"Society will continue to exacerbate the negative impact of the menopause on women until younger women and men of all ages join the conversation and educate themselves on what to expect and how to talk to a loved one experiencing it.”

Since March 2020, an estimated 600,000 UK women have entered the menopause. New data now reveals the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the emotional symptoms of menopause, with a particularly high proportion of women (61 per cent) with children under 16 reporting this.

In the last year, a combination of factors, such as being confined to the home leading to reduced opportunities for ‘in the moment’ support from female friends, and reduced GP support, has left four in ten of those going through the menopause believing Covid has reduced the amount of support available, which experts warn has exacerbated feelings of isolation.

The study, conducted by insight and strategy consultancy Britain Thinks for My Menopause Centre, involved a nationally representative online survey of 2,087 adults in the UK and qualitative research with women with experience of the menopause, male partners and workplace managers.

Clare says despite the rise in celebrities, such as Davina McCall, talking about their menopause experience, menopause is still considered a taboo and not well understood.

“A lot of women still don’t feel comfortable talking about the menopause,” she says. “It is something that our mothers just didn’t talk to us about. A lot of them suffered in silence. Things are getting better but there is still a long way to go.”

Mother-of-three Clare, 49, said she had always had an interest in women’s hormonal health, but it was the needs of her patients in Leeds that made her want to study the menopause further as well as her own experience.

“I had just hit 40 and had a really busy life juggling three children and a hard working surgery and I just started to feel more anxious and like I was started to drop balls. Things I had found easy before made me feel really stressed,” recalls Clare.

“A friend said they thought I was going through the perimenopause and so I started HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) and just felt better and have never looked back.”

She says a lot of women are frightened to take HRT following a health report in 2002 which showed an increased risk of breast cancer to women on HRT.

“Reports at the time didn’t make it clear that although the risk was doubled we were starting from a very low base point. People who drink a glass of wine a night or are obese have a higher risk of getting breast cancer than by taking HRT. And on top of that HRT brings other health benefits such as reducing the risk of osteoporosis.”

In a bid to help women to start the conversation around menopause, Clare and the team at My Menopause Centre created an innovative online questionnaire in response to one of the most frequently asked questions: ‘Am I menopausal?’ The questionnaire has been designed to capture the key questions used by doctors to assess where and if a woman is in the menopause transition (including age, bleeding patterns, symptoms and gynecological history), and an algorithm was developed to enable automation of the analysis.

The personalised assessment is designed to help women understand where they are in the menopause transition as well as provide information and advice on any symptoms and how to treat them.

But Clare believes education around the menopause, indeed about hormonal changes in both women and men, needs to start far earlier.

“We really need to be informing children at school about hormones as the changes affect everyone,” she says. “As a society we need to change attitudes towards something that affects every single woman and therefore their families.”

Although she has an NHS practice, My Menopause Centre is run privately, but Clare would love to see women being offered longer appointments and better help on the NHS.

How men can help their partners through menopause

Shockingly, 55 per cent of men think that the menopause isn’t an issue that affects them personally, which is a barrier to gaining further understanding of how to support women directly experiencing it, and five in 10 younger women ‘don’t know much’ about the menopause.

Listen to their menopause experience. Listening to a woman’s experience of the menopause is the best way to understand how you can support them and offer to help.

Be prepared to make changes too. Menopause can be a very isolating experience for women particularly after a year of challenges. Be prepared to turn awareness into action, for example, ensuring the house or office environment is at a comfortable temperature or being flexible with a work colleague by not planning back-to-back meetings where they can’t plan a comfort break.

Be part of the solution. Beyond female friendships, women describe a lack of support from their employers, their family and healthcare professionals.

Broaden the conversation within your own circles at home and work and be an advocate for women’s health to ensure others benefit from your new-found knowledge to make menopause part of everyone’s life, and importantly, everyone’s business

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