Suicide deaths show menopause can trigger midlife mental health crisis: neuropsychiatrist

Menopausal transition can aggravate risk factors for suicide, while menopausal hormone therapy is unlikely to be a standalone trigger, a neuropsychiatrist and researcher says.

Professor Julia Lappin said her research showed that women were actively seeking help, rather than MHT being a causal factor in their deaths.

She said the perimenopause and menopause years represented a period of heightened vulnerability where numerous risk factors for suicide converged.

Her research has investigated 63 suicide deaths of women who were on menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) when they died, using coronial data from 2000 to 2024.

×

Sign in

If this is your first visit to the new AusDoc website, reset your password
here.