It is September.
A new season, a brilliant new cup, and a new focus: thesis preparation time.
This autumn, I’ll be diving deeper into the neuroscience and neurobiology of midlife women’s mental health. It feels increasingly relevant to my work, given that around half of my clients are professional women, and deeply personal too.
I somehow feel I owe it to my clients, male and female, to myself, and perhaps also to my mother, whom I lost to Alzheimer’s earlier this summer, to better understand what actually happens to our brains and mental health as we move through midlife.
Because there is an interesting tension here.
The midlife years can be a period of considerable experience, confidence and opportunity. At the same time, they can also coincide with substantial biological, psychological and social change. For women in particular, the menopausal transition involves changes in reproductive hormones and can be accompanied by changes in sleep, mood, cognition and wellbeing. These changes do not affect everyone in the same way, and it would be far too simplistic to suggest that menopause itself causes mental health difficulties. But for some women, this period can represent an important window of increased sensitivity and change.
And this is happening at a rather inconvenient time.
These are often the years when demands are already high. Careers may be at their most intense. Leadership responsibilities increase. Children may still need considerable support, while ageing parents can begin to require more care. There can be financial pressures, relationship changes, questions about identity and the growing awareness that our own time and energy are not infinite.
In other words, the brain and body may be navigating change at precisely the point when life is asking us to perform, lead, care, adapt and keep going.
That intersection is what I want to understand better.
Not just the biology, but the interaction between biology, psychology and context. How do changes in the brain and endocrine system intersect with stress, sleep, executive functioning, social expectations and the demands of modern working life? And how might a better understanding of these processes help us distinguish between what is a normal part of ageing, what may be related to the menopausal transition, and what deserves further attention or support?
These questions matter to me professionally, but they have also taken on a different weight personally.
Losing my mother to Alzheimer’s has made the subject of brain health feel much less abstract. It has also reminded me how little any of us should take our cognitive and psychological wellbeing for granted.
So this autumn, I am going back to the books, the research papers and, no doubt, a slightly excessive number of cups of coffee.
How can we help our generation, and those coming after us, experience the prospect of a longer life more as a gift, while navigating this phase of life with the awareness and care it deserves?
I humbly recognise that I won’t find the full answer in one thesis.
But I hope to come out of the process a little wiser.
And perhaps a little better equipped to have the conversations that matter.
