Many types of memory loss at midlife are attributable to other, more combatable factors, such as overwork, stress, anxiety, and depression. The Seattle study found that physical health, emotional factors, and stress accounted for almost half of the memory loss noted in participants. Depression and high levels of stress played a key role in short-term memory degradation. Among participants in the study, only 24 percent of memory loss was attributed to the physical effects of aging.
Memory Loss
If you’re nearing age fifty and you haven’t yet begun to experience periodic memory lapses, consider yourself lucky. The busier and more stressful life becomes, the easier it is to misplace car keys, forget an associate’s name, lose track of the point you were about to make, and remember the title of that movie starring, “That guy with the eyebrows-you know the one who married that woman who was in the soap opera for so many years . . . the one who’s dead now . . . shoot, it’s on the tip of my tongue.” Sound familiar? As one fifty-something friend once said, “It takes three middle-aged people to tell any one story.” Multiple events challenge the memory at middle age; some of these challenges stem from the inevitable physical changes of age, and many of them are not yet fully understood by the scientific and medical communities. Though many women wonder if they’re showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s, the vast majority of memory loss problems are natural—and sometimes transient—responses to the effects of age, menopausal hormone changes, stress, and a busy, changing life.
Many women in perimenopause have minor mood problems that may include insomnia, anxiety, and irritability. But when these problems become severe or long-standing, these women can develop major depression. Major depression is an illness that prevents sufferers from working, eating, sleeping, studying, and enjoying a full, normal life and range of moods. Major depression typically results from changes in brain chemistry; therefore, even though it can occur once in a lifetime, many people who suffer from major depression experience it several times.
Another, less severe, type of depression is known as dysthymia. The symptoms of dysthymia are similar to those of major depression and may be chronic and long-term, but they aren’t disabling. Finally, bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness) is another kind of depression. People suffering from a bipolar disorder experience extreme mood shifts that swing wildly between manic highs and depressed lows.
If you suffer from low self-esteem, feel overwhelmed by stress, or
have a persistently pessimistic attitude toward life, you might be at risk for developing depression. Scientists continue to study the causes of depression, to determine whether these types of feelings are an indicator that you’re prone to depression, or whether these feelings can actually trigger the illness.
Depression makes itself known to each individual in unique ways, but some symptoms are typical of the disease. The National Institute of Mental Health provides a list of common symptoms of depression (though it notes that few people suffer all of them).
Here are some of those symptoms:
Feeling persistently sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, or pessimistic
A strong sense of impending doom, with no idea what form this
awful event might take or why it will happen
If you consider all of these potential triggers, you easily can see how some women might suffer from depression during perimenopause. Menopause itself doesn’t cause these cases of depression, but the hormonal changes of perimenopause can join with other natural life events of middle age to contribute to a depressed state. Women who have suffered in the past from depression or who have experienced severe PMS seem to be especially vulnerable to depression during perimenopause.
