A young woman who suffered early menopause at the age of 27 has revealed how hormone treatment saved her life.
Kathy Haskins is one of a group of women who have spoken out about being misdiagnosed by doctors and how little is still known about the condition.
Experts claim there is a dearth of research into the link between menopause and mental health, with 52 now being the average age for women dying by suicide.
Read More: Fit and healthy Irish woman diagnosed with breast cancer at 27 says her 'world fell apart'
For Dubliner Kathy, problems for her began when she was half that age.
She revealed: “I was 27 or 28 when I started having severe symptoms. I didn’t sleep from 28 to the age of 30.
“And then when I did sleep I was only sleeping for three hours. The sweats were absolutely violent.
“Anxiety stepped in horribly and I had suicidal thoughts, but menopause never crossed my mind.
“I thought I was just sick, that something was seriously wrong. I tried to seek help but I couldn’t get help.
“My GP didn’t take me seriously.”
Kathy went to her partner’s GP who prescribed the oestrogen patch and the improvement was immediate.
She said: “I started that on a Thursday morning and on Thursday night I slept for 10 hours after nearly 20 months of nearly no sleep at all.
“It was so nice. After three weeks my symptoms had completely stopped.”
Menopause specialist Dr Deirdre Lundy reveals on RTE documentary The Change: Ireland’s Menopause Story how important hormone replacement is for those suffering at such a young age.
“Some people are born genetically predisposed to very, very, early hormone loss. We call that premature ovarian insufficiency and that’s a significant medical condition,” says Dr Lundy.
“When you’re under 40 and you lose your natural hormone level you need those hormones [replaced].
“The risks are tiny compared to the benefits you will derive from using them.
“The risk of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, certain types of dementia goes off the charts if you don’t replace that hormone after having lost it too young.”
Experts claim there could be as many as 40 different symptoms for menopause affecting the brain, heart, skin, sexual organs, joints and emotional wellbeing.
“Flushes and sweats might sound trivial but it’s a whole body experience,” says Dr Lundy.
Although doctors routinely prescribed HRT medication for menopause in the 90s, a false link to breast cancer meant it lost favour with the medical profession and only in recent years started making a comeback.
“The headlines wrongly suggested that using hormones to control your menopause symptoms would give you breast cancer. It is patently not the case,” says Dr Lundy.
“So having merrily been able to offer a certain amount of hormone relief for very unwell patients in the 90s and early 2000s, literally overnight, 2002, you just could not give hormones away.
“People just disappeared. The amount of harm done just cannot be quantified.”
One woman approaching menopause, Shirley, 48, told how her own mother Mary could not get the help she needed and took her own life.
“With my mam the red flag was never raised. Nobody said, ‘Hormones? Menopause? Oh, this is what is wrong, we will have a look at this’,” said Shirley.
“It was this remedy, that remedy, and then it spiralled and spiralled where there was no coming back for her.
“I’m 49 this year and I feel maybe it’s going to hit with a bang and my mam is a huge part of that.
“She was 51 when she started to notice her sleep changing. She was tired, things weren’t functioning properly, so she decided to visit her GP.
“He decided to put her on a sleeping tablet. That didn’t work and it was going on and on.
“She was told she had depression. Back in those times 14 years ago people would have thought depression was a madman’s disease.
“We went to another doctor, a psychologist, but between the jigs and the reels nothing really worked and unfortunately she died by suicide.
“You would do anything to have her back. If I can only save maybe one person that is feeling low now… don’t accept the first answer you’re given. Ask for a second opinion.”
*The Change: Ireland’s Menopause Story is on RTE One on Monday at 9.35pm.
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