Reports that research results offer evidence that hormones,
especially the female hormones known as estrogens, really do influence
mental illness. Attribution of the lower rates of schizophrenia and other
kinds of psychopathology experienced by premenstrual women partially to
estrogen; How the estrogen estradiol protect women against psychosis;
Effects of constant flactuations of estrogens in women's bloodstreams;
Advantages of estrogen replacement therapy.
By
Annie Murphy Paul, published on March 01, 1998
Teenagers are living proof that hormones can make you crazy. But
new researchoffers fresh evidence that these secretions--especially the
female hormones known as estrogens--really do influence mental
illness.
The lower rates of schizophrenia and other hinds of psychopathology
experienced by premenopausal women may be partially attributable to
estrogen, says Mary Seeman, M.D., of Toronto's Clarke Institute of
Psychiatry. For example, estradiol, the estrogen most important to the
brain, may protect women against psychosis by shieidling vulnerable
neural circuits that become active in adolescence. This protective effect
wanes when women's estrogen levels begin to decline as they approach age
40. Even before then psychotic symptoms are most common when estrogen
levels drop after pregnancy and during portions of the menstrual
cycle.
The constant fluctuations of estrogens in women's bloodstreams,
however, may c contribute to other types of mental illness. Since one
ofestradiol's functions is to neutralize the effects of stress hormones,
its repeated absence may predispose women to anxiety disorders, says
Seeman. "It's possible that the cyclic withdrawal of progestins and
estrogen `kindles' nerve tissues, making them more reactive and
susceptible to anxiety states." The good news: research indicates that
estrogen replacement therapy can restore to postmenopausal women many of
the natural advantages of being born female.
A.M.P.
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