Hello,
I'm a newbie, and spend most of my time in Vietnam, but am UK based. 53, almost two years without a period.
A year ago, my GP in Saigon flat refused to give me HRT and put me on Prozac instead. I warned her that I had been on anti-depressants in my youth and found they completely killed my creative thinking functions. I was in the middle of a doctorate and could not afford to be blunted. But she asked me to give it a three month trial, so I did. It didn't help with the hot flashes or with my insomnia and only made the brain fog worse. I stopped taking them after 3 months, and just suffered the physical symptoms because at least I had my intellect back. When I returned to the UK, I visited my UK GP, and he put me on HRT FemSeven Conti patches, and they worked a treat. They don't deal with all the symptoms completely, but it's way better. It's manageable. Perhaps the Prozac works for some women, but it didn't work for me at all. I lost three months of academic work suffering the intense mental apathy. So, I'm 100% with Hurdity on this. Moreover, the militant part of me suspects that this craze for proscribing Prozac for menopausal symptoms may be like a 21st century version of the Victorian 'hysterical woman' treatments of the 19th Century. Clearly they do wonders for some women, but definitely not for everyone and, for some people, the creativity blunting can be more devastating than the physical symptoms of menopause.