In answer to Sally: sometimes. Having myself been hurtled into peri-menopause after the birth of my youngest son, when I was 42, I have been on HRT for the past five years. It took me a while after the birth to work out that although my body had generously facilitated a pregnancy in my 40s, for which I was very grateful, it didn’t follow that it relished the process. What I would previously have considered to be PMS quickly became something less quantifiable. My search for solutions led me to Professor John Studd, where it became apparent that the misdiagnosis of women with hormonal issues as depressed or even bipolar is more common than one would like to acknowledge. If a woman goes to her GP and complains about menopausal symptoms, she may strike lucky – or she may be given very short shrift indeed.