WRONGLY PRESCRIBED DEPRESSION TABLETS

KELLY SWINGLER, 41, an executive business coach and psychologist, lives in Peterborough with her partner and twin sons, aged 21, and stepsons, aged 18 and 11. WITHIN two months of starting on HRT, the anxiety and ‘burnout’ I’d suffered on and off for eight years had vanished.

My periods had stopped after a minor op on my uterus in 2013. I wasn’t too concerned: I was 32 and had suffered with heavy periods since my teens, and had already had my children.

But in 2015 I began experiencing disrupted sleep and night sweats, I put on weight and started feeling anxious and emotional. Older female colleagues said this could be menopause but my GP said I was too young and prescribed antidepressants. I took them in the hope they’d make me feel ‘normal’. But my mood kept sinking and that Christmas Eve, I wanted to take my own life. I decided I had to start helping myself. I stopped taking the antidepressants and improved my diet. I did more yoga and began, slowly, to feel better. But in 2017, I started to feel overwhelmed by the same symptoms, which I put down to ‘burnout’ at work again. I felt I really needed to fix this in my own head. Therapy helped, but by 2019, the cycle was repeating itself and by 2020 when the pandemic hit, I felt I didn’t know what planet I was on.

But after I watched Davina McCall’s documentary on the menopause last May I recognised the symptoms and knew it wasn’t me going crazy: it was the menopause. Then two friends mentioned a private doctor who’d put them both on HRT. I saw their doctor in October 2021 and was prescribed oestrogen patches and a daily progesterone pill; within weeks I felt completely different.

Now my energy is 100 per cent better and my brain fog is lifting. My night sweats and anxiety have disappeared, too.

I was wary of HRT and the potential sideeffects. But I feel any risk outweighs the

risk of me not taking HRT. I can’t believe what a difference it’s made to my life.