10 Reasons Everybody Needs to Know About Peri/menopause

It’s always sooner than you think. While the average age of menopause is 51, 10% reach menopause before 45, 1% before 40 and many earlier than that – even before you think about surgical and medical menopause. The experience of perimenopause can last around 10 years for some of us. I’ll let you do the maths, but suffice to say if you have ovaries or care about someone with ovaries it’s never too soon to learn.
It’s when perimenopause isn’t recognised that it does the most damage – and sometimes it shows up in strange ways. We can end up being disregarded or even misdiagnosed and mistreated – and sometimes that can cause even more damage, especially if we end up on inappropriate psychoactive drugs.
Perimenopause and menopause don’t occur in a vacuum. Everyone who experiences them is connected to – and often caring for – many people. When they find they can’t cope, it has an impact on many lives.
The effects of perimenopause and menopause are far reaching. They affect the brain as well as the body. We may see changes that affect our conversations with those in perimenopause or menopause. If we don’t understand what’s going on, that makes no sense.
If we do understand what’s happening there are small changes we can make that make everybody’s lives easier. These include considering the way we communicate in case those dealing with a perimenopausal brain struggle to remember things they are told in passing.
Perimenopause and menopause can cause significant challenges to our work in schools. Understanding what’s happening means that we can help people do their jobs better. As we’re a team, everybody functions well when everyone is functioning well.
In extreme circumstances perimenopausal women can be in danger. There is very occasionally acute mental distress and suicide rates for women are at their highest at this time. Understanding what is happening helps us keep each other safe.
The conversations that we have that help menopausal women also help other members of staff. For example conversations about access to toilets is useful for men who develop prostate issues as they age. And we can all benefit from thinking about how we manage and mitigate stress.
If we don’t acknowledge and deal with our own discomfort around the subject we can end up dealing with it inappropriately or insensitively. That can cause hurt and damage relationships.
Empathy springs from understanding and working in a culture where empathy matters benefits us all.