WORKSHOP: What Role can Replacement Sex Hormones play in Women's Health?
Presenting Author(s): Dr. Roger C. Rampling, BMedSci, MD, FRCPC
Date and time: 22 Mar 2025 from 15:10 to 16:10
Location: Hawthorn A
Abstract
This presentation is a more thorough exploration of a similar talk from the 2024 APA. It includes current science and greater opportunity to discuss treatment.
Hormonal factors have been under-recognized and under-utilised by psychiatrists. Mood and anxiety disorders are long-known to be over-represented in females.
Sub-syndromal mood, and anxiety symptoms are much more common than generally recognised psychiatric diagnoses.
Furthermore, there are hormonal variants of these presentations that have multi-dimensional health impacts.
Although our profession focuses on improvements in mental state, interpersonal, and role function, hormonal intervention is known to beneficially alter the broadest health trajectory of women for decades.
This offers psychiatrists the opportunity and indeed the obligation to understand an intervention that can help in most every dimension.
We, including patients, physicians, journal editors, medical educators, government regulators, all struggle with biases in our thinking. These biases allow different actors to argue virtually any position about hormonal intervention.
This presentation will distill information from multiple sources from early-day 1929 to modern studies in late 2024. It will evict medical myths, and guide appropriate interventions with startling effect size and widest applicability.
Learning Objectives
1. Understand the scope of hormone-related disturbances of mood and cognition;
2. Learn current state of science on perimenopausal and menopausal hormone use; and
3. Assess some strengths and weaknesses of different study designs.
Literature References
1. https://thekit.ca/living/health/hrt-safety-menopause-canada/ Frangou, C 2024 Oct 13, Lay Press Personal Experiences
2. Manson,J 2018 Managing Menopause: Are the WHI Findings Being Misunderstoodhttps://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/859512
3. Lega, I et al, CMAJ 2023 May 15;195:E677-82. A Pragmatic Approach to Menopause doi: 10.1503/cmaj.221438
4. Manson, J and Staunitz, N Engl J Med 2016; 374:803-806. Menopause Management: Getting Clinical Care Back on Track DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1514242
5. Soares, C. N. Mood disorders in midlife women: understanding the critical window and its clinical implications. Menopause 21, 198–206 (2014. Menopause. 2014 Feb;21(2):198-206. doi: 10.1097/GME.0000000000000193
6. Pop AL, Nasui BA, Bors RG, Penes ON, Prada AG, Clotea E, Crisan S, Cobelschi C, Mehedintu C, Carstoiu MM, Varlas VN. The Current Strategy in Hormonal and Non-Hormonal Therapies in Menopause-A Comprehensive Review. Life (Basel). 2023 Feb 26;13(3):649. doi: 10.3390/life13030649.PMID: 36983805