my mental health and the contraceptive pill

Lets talk mental health. I approached the subject recently in a vlog on my youtube channel. I have a lot of experience of mental health both personally and professionally, so I have decided to start sharing that with you guys.

Today, I want to chat about mental health and the contraceptive pill. I think over the last couple of years there has been a lot more awareness about the link between taking the pill and depression, so I wanted to share my experience. Most importantly, I wanted to share with you what happened when I stopped taking the pill.

Lets go back 10 years, I started taking the combined pill which is where you take it for 21 days and then have a 7 day break which is when you would have your period. It contains artificial hormones of oestrogen and progesterone. I was prescribed this pill when I was around the age of 14/15 years old. At the time, I was suffering from heavy periods and also had acne which completely knocked my confidence, so after going to speak with my doctor he prescribed me the pill. I continued to take this up until today where I am now 24 years old.

During the years I took the pill I suffered from a lot of mental health problems, depression, anxiety, self harm (I can do further posts on this if you like) so I cannot say that the pill was the cause of all of these issues, because I am aware of other contributing factors. However, by the time I got to around the age of 21 years old I was not experiencing other situations which could cause my depression, yet I still felt so low. I started to think the pill may be affecting my mental health. I read a shocking statistic that 23% of people who take the combined contraceptive pill are also prescribed anti-depressants, I personally think that is an alarming figure.
I continued taking the pill for the next few years, as I was perhaps naive to think it was the easiest contraceptive and I knew it well.

Fast forward to now, at 24 years old I decided to stop taking the pill and the effects of doing this is what shocked me the most.
Physically I felt horrendous, I couldn't at the time work out what on earth was going on for me, I felt dizzy, my blood pressure was constantly low, I felt sick and faint. This went on for a good couple of months.
Mentally I felt even worse, I was irritable, I was just a horrible person, I was crying at absolutely anything and everything, and I just couldn't understand what was going on. I look back and felt as though it would have been better to just keep taking the pill, because mentally I felt so vulnerable and unhappy.

6 months later I have none of the physical effects and I feel a lot more mentally stable too, I of course have days where I am tearful and irritable, but this is usually coinciding with the week before my period is due, this is normal. I am so glad that I persevered with coming off the pill, but I was shocked and at times frightened with how badly my body both physically and mentally was effected by stopping this medication.

I have also made a youtube video about this topic, but I ultimately wanted to share with you the effects the pill had for me, especially when I initially stopped taking it because at the time I felt so frightened and depressed and I couldn't seem to find anyone who had experienced this too.

I know of course this does not happen for everyone, but I didn't think it would happen to me, so I hope that this post can provide someone else who may be experiencing what I did that it passes and sticking it out I feel so much happier now the pill is completely out of my system.

I would love to know what your thoughts are on this, or if you have experienced anything similar?