Customer Reviews

Women's Moods: What Every Woman Must Know About Hormones, the Brain, and Emotional Health

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This book was recommended to me by a therapist who works with postpartum women experiencing depression. It is a gift to anyone who has suffered mood swings, depression, crying fits, or irrational anger and wondered why. No, it isn't excuses, it's explanations that make sense and help to alleviate the guilt and shame that come with such feelings. It is written in an accessible style for what is essentially a medical/psychological text. I intend to give it to all of my women friends, and even a few men I know who've suffered with depression. Recommended reading.

As a clinical health psychologist in an OB/GYN facility as well as a survivor of a recent life "earthquake" - I found this book to be an enormously validating experience both personally and professionally.

The overwhelming majority of my patients are postpartum women who are suffering from a mood disorder which is embarrassingly poorly understood, and are often told to "snap out of it" at a time when "they should be happy."

The authors of this book offer an explanation for postpartum depression from a biochemical standpoint, and thus relieve women from the shame that they are somehow doing "the mother thing" incorrectly.

However, despite the fact that the book focuses on women's hormonal events such as pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause, this book explains women's depression from a view that is significant to any woman, regardless of her status of ever having been pregnant. In my estimation, this is the most powerful and most broadly applicable benefit of this book.

The authors regard mood disorders as the result of brain "dysregulation" - a state which exists following repetitive and/or extreme stress to the brain, and based on an excess of stress hormones or "chemical loading." The dysregulation occurs when the brain "relearns" the adaptive stress mode as being the normal mode of operation, and gets "stuck" like a needle in a record groove which can't quite jump out on its own.

The book's salvation - the NURSE program in conjunction with antidepressants, may be simplistic in some cases, but it's the best by far that we have to offer right now, and quite possibly the solution which leads to the quickest relief of physical and emotional symptoms. Therefore, I have recommended this book wholeheartedly to my patients as well as to those spouses/family members/significant others who need to better understand what their loved ones are facing.

As someone who is recovering from severe Postpartum Depression and postpartum OCD, this book was invaluable. Unlike other books that list symptoms and offer coping skills, this book actually shares the stories of women who have suffered through the hell that PPD can be. No matter how many times I'd been told "this is part of the illness, it will get better," I had a difficult time believing that until I read the story of Pamela, who suffered from postpartum OCD. I couldn't believe what I was reading! Parts of her story were so familiar to me that it was frightening; but I took comfort in the fact that I'm not alone, that this illness is VERY REAL. It is so difficult to suffer from mental illness, especially when no one around you can see the pain you are in. You just look "normal." For me, this book has been a wonderful tool to help educate my family about the severity of what I have been through. They had a better understanding after reading real stories that paralled mine, versus reading lists of symptoms that simply defined depression. A must read for women who suffer from major mood disorders and for their families, too.

I found this book to be extremely helpful, visionary and most substantive. From a physician's point of view this is an exceptional book bringing psychiatry into mainstream medicine in a remarkably simple and clear presentation of complex biological and psychological issues to help foster an understanding of how simple but repeated stressors can lead to significant dysfunction.

I will be recommending this exceptional book to my patients, males and females, their families and all my friends. Well done Sichel and Driscoll for what I see as the first book integrating so many of the vital factors contributing to depression!

I have just finished reading Sichel and Driscoll's book, which I selected based on the quality of journal citations from their bibliography. If you are a woman diagnosed with unipolar depression whose doctors and mental health care providers have ignored your full reproductive history, I strongly advise you to pay close attention to Sichel and Driscoll's many case histories of women with undiagnosed bipolar II. These histories show many Bipolar II's exquisite hormonal sensitivities manifest as bad reactions to birth control pills as well as hypomania triggered by antidepressants, but only at certain points in the hormonal cycle. See if the other symptoms and events (agitation, irritability, PPD) sound familiar to you. For any such woman considering perimenopausal or postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy, this book could be literally lifesaving.

When I was 5 months pregnant with my second child, a good friend suggested I read this book. I can't thank her enough! Though I had suffered greatly with depression after my first pregnancy, I had been unable to bring myself to get professional help. My upbringing had embedded in my mind the idea that "popping pills" was an easy way out for those people incapable of dealing with their own "true" feelings. So I tried (unsuccessfully) to combat my postpartum sadness, self-hatred, and anxiety with exercise, sunshine, good diet, etc., and to brush it all off as sleep deprivation and new-mom adjustment. Although this book stresses that sleep, exercise, and nutrition are important, it also helped me to accept that for some women, anti-depressant drugs may be the only way to successfully counteract the influence of hormones on thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Near the end of my second pregnancy, when I began to dread the birth of my baby, I became a patient of Driscoll's and decided to give anti-depressants a try. I'm now thoroughly enjoying every minute with my second baby, and I'm regretting greatly that the year after my first child's birth was a time of such great sadness. If you feel you may be depressed but are finding that you can't bring yourself to get professional help, this book may give you the nudge you need.

We really need a good book on the relationship of women's hormones to women's moods. Unfortunately, this is not it.

This book, written by a psychiatrist and a nurse, relies almost entirely on case histories to make its points, with almost no examination of the scientific basis for its conclusions.

So the reader may come away believing that science well understands the role of hormones in mental illness and has figured out the causes of depression, which an examination of the actual literature shows is very far from the case.

Many of the authors' explanations of the origins of mental illnesses like depression are current theories that depend on a few. not particularly well controlled. studies, not well established fact.

If you'd like to believe that Prozac and its cousins are the cure for any and all of women's emotional problems, you'll find reinforcement here. In almost every case history the authors present, the sequence is: patient has mental problems, patient reveals earlier history of trauma, patient takes Prozac, patient feels fine.

The authors propound the currently fashionable medical philosophy--based largely on studies funded by the drug companies that produce SSRI drugs like Prozac--that depression and other mental illnesses, once experienced, are lifetime diseases that should be treated with permanent (and expensive) drug therapy.

The phamacological approach may be useful for the small percentage of the population that has serious mental problems, and this book may be useful to them and their families. But like so much current psychiatric writing (and drug company advertising), this book medicalizes a good 80% of ALL women, claiming that if you lose weight, gain weight, feel listless, feel energetic, feel sad, feel bouyant, have trouble with relationships, or have any number of other common symptoms, you are deluding yourself that you are healthy and should seriously consider treating your lifelong disease--what the authors call "brain failure."

The sketchy non-drug strategy included in the book depends heavily on diet and exercise. Unfortunately, the diet advice is seriously flawed. The authors recommend the low fat, high carbohydrate diet that causes mood swings and hypoglycemic sugar binging in many women, particularly at menopause, which current research is starting to show may actually cause hyperinsulemia and resultant heart disease in many women. There is no mention in the discussion of hormones of the very important interaction of insulin and female hormones which explains a lot of PMS food cravings and mood swings.

Finally, the discussion of menopause is extremely brief and does not begin to address the issue of how natural menopausal changes and HRT affect mood.

This book is probably only of use to people with clearly diagnosed psychiatric diseases like bipolar disorder and serious postpartum depression/psychosis who need information on how to take their drugs in conjunction with pregnancy and the menstrual cycle.

For those of us who get along okay but would like a better understanding of our moods and how hormones affect them, and who don't want to enrich the legal drug pushers, this book is a waste of time.

I am an author on this subject, and I am always interested in anything on this subject. Mss. Sichel and Driscoll have done women a great service in talking about the hormone-brain connection. There are few good books on the subject. Dr. Elizabeth Vliet's Screaming to Be Heard is one such. I am particularly writing to defend Mss. Sichel and Driscoll concerning the first review which praised them but then criticized them for so-called "doctor bashing." Really all they did was record women's experiences with physicians. The reality is such stories are true. In all areas of hormonal disorders, including those discussed here, women find great difficulty getting help from the medical profession. This is a generalization but the incidence is very common and a real problem.

I have practiced as a hormonal consultant for 20 years and heard such stories every day. Yet, often when someone tries to write the truth about the situation for women and the way they are treated, they are criticized. But for many women who have been badly treated in this way, it helps to see in print that they are not alone and they are not crazy.

I think about this subject a great deal. I am currently writing two more books and have to constantly weigh the balance between talking about the medical issues themselves or talking about doctors' attitudes. We who see the women can't help but become angry over the way so many are treated. When you read the research, there is so much known now about hormonal disorders that the average patient and the average doctor doesn't know (because they aren't taught it at medical school). There are many wonderful exceptions like Dr. Sichel herself, but they are relatively rare in each geographical location.

Over the nearly three decades I have worked with women, I have found the information coming out on hormonal medicine has burgeoned. But what doesn't change is the average doctor's attitude. I was a victim of it in the 1970s, and I hear similar stories to mine still. Yet, I am not "antidoctor"--I am someone who has always worked with doctors, and I value and respect them highly.

I think about further study at university and wonder should I write about the subjects themselves (PPD, menopause, androgen excess disorders) or about the doctors! To me having the information is relatively useless if you can't find someone to help you. It's a huge issue of women's rights and one that isn't yet being voiced much. You have a right to good health and to have access to the best that is known. Your physician (by knowledge and attitude) determines and limits the amount of help you get. To me this is a subject about which women should be marching on Washington. One day they will.

Dr. Sichel as a physician herself is the very person who SHOULD talk about this. Ultimately, doctors have to regulate themselves. But with medicine in the state it is, struggling to survive, the problems of which we speak will always be at the bottom of the barrel.

Thank you both for being prepared to speak out.

Gillian Ford, author of Listening to Your Hormones...

This book was helpful during my own bout with post-partum depression. It de-stigmatizes the condition, puts it in simple language, and offers positive, proactive tips for managing depression. It also offers worksheets for tracking your emotional heath to spott any "hot-spots". Additionally, it is the first and only book I've read that correlates these medical conditions with a woman's reproductive cycle. An excellent find for any woman grappling with PMS, post-partum depression, menopause, or anyone who just wants to understand the female experience better. It should be required reading for every women's study class! The only downside is that the authors tend to do a lot of bashing of the medical profession for not "getting" this connection between women's emotional & reproductive health sooner. Yeah, that may be so, but they didn't, so thus this book...move on. That's an issue totally outside of the reader's perspective or control & isn't why the reader chose to pick this book to begin with!

Hormone changes can happen at any time in a woman's life from puberty, pregnancy to menopause and beyond. From personal experience, I thought all my problems were resolved when I went through menopause two years ago, only to realize as long as their is life, there are hormone changes. This book can be a woman's salvation when she comes to realizing she is not actually suffering from a case of sudden insanity, but hormone changes. Those devils, or lack thereof, can contribute to everything from insomnia, mood changes, loss of appetite, and low energy to physical aches and pains and increased susceptibility to infections.

The message given in this book may not be new. We know, to keep our minds and body healthy, we need proper nutrition, understanding, relaxation, spirituality and exercise, but the authors' way of presenting the information is unique and interesting. This is a terrific book for women of any age. If you do not need it now, chances are you soon will.