Entries / symptom
Low mood and depressive symptoms in menopause
limited Evidence strength · Status: published · Source agreement: high
Not medical advice
Menowise aggregates and organizes what the published literature reports, with citations. It does not diagnose, advise, or recommend treatment. Talk to a qualified clinician about your own care.
What the literature reports
The SWAN cohort reports higher odds of clinically significant depressive symptoms during perimenopause and early postmenopause than premenopause (roughly 1.5x or more, highest in late perimenopause); premenopausal women with no depression history were about twice as likely to develop significant depressive symptoms on entering perimenopause, and associations persisted after accounting for psychosocial and health factors. NICE NG23 describes considering HRT and/or CBT for low mood associated with menopause, and reports that SSRIs/SNRIs have not been shown to ease low mood in the absence of a diagnosis of depression.
Citations
- Depression and the menopause transition (SWAN) — SWAN (Study of Women's Health Across the Nation) · cohort
- Menopause: identification and management (NG23) — National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE NG23) (2015) · guideline
Notes
'Low mood and depressive symptoms' needs an entities entry (kind: symptom); id not invented. Interventions referenced (CBT — cbt-menopause; HRT — menopausal-hormone-therapy) are distinct intervention entries. Independent sources (SWAN cohort + NICE) concordant.
Provenance
This entry is resolved from per-source signals; the raw claims are the audit trail behind it.
- Machine record: /data/sites/low-mood-depressive-symptoms.yml (schema-valid, verbatim)
- Signals:
sig-20260710-low-mood-guideline,sig-20260710-low-mood-ssri-effect,sig-20260710-low-mood-swan-effect - First recorded 2026-07-10 · last updated 2026-07-10