With some of my cycles lasting upwards of 50 days and my

‘No, I can’t take the pill,’ I said, patiently.

‘It makes me depressed.’
The doctor frowned and looked up at me.

‘Depressed?

That’s not a symptom that’s usually reported,’ he replied.

It was September 2025 and I was sitting in my GP’s office for what felt like the hundredth time, trying to get to the bottom of my irregular, painful periods.

Since I was a teenager, every time I’d spoken to doctors about the issue I’d had the same response: either regulate your periods with the pill, or suck it up.

So I wasn’t surprised at his suggestion – but I was baffled when he said depression wasn’t ‘usually reported’.

After all, it’s well known that hormonal contraception can induce feelings of depression.

‘Quite a lot of my friends feel the same as I do,’ I said, arguing my case.

The doctor shrugged.

‘Something else might be causing that.

I think the pill is the only option we have here.’
That was that.

No alternative solution and no validation of my side effects.

I first started taking the pill at 15, when my periods started to cause me so much pain I felt as if I was going to pass out.

At the time, my GP said ‘everyone goes on the pill’ and that there were very few downsides; that it would regulate my periods, making them less heavy and painful.

I felt grown up; excited to be a woman responsible for taking a seemingly magic pill that could make everything better.

Initially, I enjoyed a relatively light, significantly less painful period that came almost exactly 28 days after the last.

However, my mental health took a sudden turn.

I’m a sensitive person who often swings between emotions, but something dulled within me.

I felt disconnected from reality.

I didn’t connect the pill with this feeling at first.

As a teenager, I assumed it was just part of growing up.

When I began noticing physical symptoms like weight gain, I returned to the doctors to try a different contraception.

Over the next few years, I tried four different types of pill, each with its own negative side effects that I sucked up, assuming it was just a price women had to pay.

Because depression was never mentioned as a potential side effect, I battled the low mood with therapy and antidepressants, assuming something else was behind it.

I finally stopped taking the pill at 20, after a breakup, and almost immediately, the change in my mental health was drastic.

I felt hopeful and happy again, present in the moment rather than distant.

It was as if a darkness had lifted.

A year after stopping oral contraception, I took Norethisterone – a medication that delays your period – for a few days on holiday.

The old feelings came back instantly: I was depressed and withdrawn, despite my sunny surroundings.

That’s when I knew for certain that messing with my hormones in any way came with huge consequences.

I’m not saying my bouts of depression were solely caused by the pill.

I still experience low moods and anxiety , but the kind of depression I experienced while taking it was on a different level.

When I spoke to family and friends about my experience, my mum had felt a similar kind of depression when she took the pill, and friends had given up on oral contraceptives altogether because of mood swings.

I was glad I wasn’t alone, but my overwhelming feeling was disappointment that this wasn’t spoken about more.

So, when I was offered the pill yet again in 2025, even though I was shocked at the doctor’s reaction, this time, I wasn’t a teenager.

I was a woman who knew her own body.

I refused the pill that day, deciding to dig into the research before blindly accepting medication again.

A 2023 Swedish study of more than a quarter of a million women found that the first two years of using oral contraception were associated with a 71% higher risk of developing depression.

It also found that women who started taking contraceptive pills in their teens had a 130% higher incidence of symptoms of depression; for women over 20, it was 92% higher.

Reading this, I felt even more incredulous.

My doctor had so easily dismissed my concerns, making me feel both deluded and uneducated about my own body in one fell swoop, when in fact, I was right.

Need support for your mental health?

You can contact mental health charity Mind on 0300 123 3393 or text them on 86463 .

Mind can also be reached by email at info@mind.org.uk .

You can find out more information about them on their website
After blood tests, ultrasounds and examinations, I’m no closer to understanding my painful, irregular periods.

I’ve been told by a different GP to stay fit and active and return to the doctors if I couldn’t get pregnant when I wanted to.

I'm an escort — this is every client I saw in a week and what they asked for
My periods are tough.

I never know when they’re going to happen, and when they do come, intense cramps mean it’s a struggle to even get out of bed on the first day.

Between seven days of pain with PMS a week before and ovulating pains in the middle of my cycle, sometimes I feel like I spend the whole month managing symptoms.

But living with this is a better option than experiencing that depression again.

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I just hope more people are made aware of the potential damage the contraceptive pill can do to our moods – and I hope, one day, we won’t have to choose between our physical and mental health.

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