In forums on Reddit, women share tales of having perimenopause and menopause symptoms misdiagnosed or dismissed as mental health disorders, early-onset dementia, or autoimmune issues, resulting in months or years of unnecessary testing. They discuss sudden mood shifts of rage, and panic, and how they are routinely labeled by their doctor as primary psychiatric conditions rather than hormonal fluctuations, leading to unnecessary antidepressant prescriptions.
Severe brain fog, memory lapses, and sleeplessness from night sweats — all common signs of menopause or perimenopause — often terrify women into believing they have a degenerative cognitive disease before considering that these seemingly disconnected symptoms might be related to perimenopause or menopause.
These conversations are not just chatter — they are scientifically important. Because they are not responding to a questionnaire written by a researcher, they might be able to offer important clues. What might medicine be missing if it isn’t listening?
In a study my colleagues and I published recently in JAMA Network Open, we compared menopause-related discussions from one of the world’s largest online menopause communities on Reddit with more than 2 million electronic health record notes at the University of California, San Francisco.
