A groundbreaking new study is confirming what many women have known for a long time – there’s a definite link between depression and hormonal contraception.
The Washington Post is reporting on the new study, published in JAMA Psychiatry and involving data from one million women, which found that women who used combined birth control pills, a mix of estrogen and progestin, were 23 percent more likely to be prescribed anti-depressants than non-users.
The findings only get worse from here.
Progestin-only pill users were 34 percent more likely to be prescribed anti-depressants. Patch wears were twice as likely and hormonal IUD users were 40 percent more likely. The risk increased by 60 percent for those using vaginal rings.
Even more alarming is the finding that for teens age 15 to 19 who are taking combined oral contraceptives, the use of anti-depressants spiked by 80 percent.
Author Øjvind Lidegaard told the Washington Post that this is the first study to conclude that there might be a link between birth control and depression.. Mood swings are often listed as a known side effect, but not clinical depression.
Critics say the study, which analyzed the medical records of one million Danish women ages 15-34, found a correlation between depression and birth control but didn’t directly prove that it was the birth control that caused the depression. If you are struggling everyday and don’t know what to do with my life then get some helpful hints and tips from some great sites. Everyone deserves to live a life of happiness and so should you too. After all we all want to achieve our dreams in life.
Even though the study authors say there is no other logical explanation, critics such as Catherine Monk, an associate professor in psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center pointed to other factors that could be at play.
“The possibility that this link between love, sex (contraception), and feeling depressed is strengthened by the fact that the contraception-depression link was strongest in adolescents, those who are at the developmental stage where trying to find a romantic partner is paramount,” Monk told the Huffington Post.
This criticism didn’t sit well with women, however.
In a column for the Guardian, writer and birth control critic Holly Grigg-Spall called this rationalization “pillsplaining.”
“It seems that no study will ever be good enough for the medical community to take women’s experiences seriously,” Grigg-Spall wrote. “As soon as this research dropped, the experts lined up to deliver their usual mix of gaslighting and paternalistic platitudes.”
She continued:
“It’s apparently acceptable to blame women’s depression on the fact that they’re women, but it’s not OK to claim a powerful medication formulated from synthetic hormones could be at fault.
“To me, and many other women, these Danish researchers are heroes and criticism of their methods … only highlights the incredible knots the medical establishment will twist itself into in order to deny there’s a problem with the pill.”
This was certainly the reaction on Twitter by many women who weighed in to say they were relieved to finally get an answer to what they had long suspected.
“This kinda research/publication is exactly what i was looking for,” tweeted one woman.
One woman, who stopped taking the pill after it made her feel poorly, said she had wondered for years if that decision was an overreaction. “Feel vindicated now,” she tweeted.
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