The pill wrecked my mental health – doctors ignored me

‘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.

With some of my cycles lasting upwards of 50 days and my menstrual pain making me bedbound for hours, I knew something wasn’t right.

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. 

I was shocked at what I found.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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