Lesson Three - How Hormones and Genes can Affect Mental Health

Hormonal Influences on Mental Health

You will recall from the first unit in this course that a hormone is a chemical in the body that sends a specific message to a cell or organ. Sometimes, hormones can have an influence on mental health because of how they fluctuate throughout the body. For the most part, the hormones that affect mental health are those that deal with reproduction: oestrogen (or estrogen; primarily a female hormone), progesterone (critical in the production of other sex and stress hormones), and testosterone (primarily a male hormone). There can be numerous kinds of hormonal imbalance in the body, but the most common are high estrogen and low testosterone. These imbalances can have differing effects on mental health.

Psychological signs of extremely high estrogen	Psychological signs of low testosterone
anxiety panic attacks stress depressed mood and/or lack of energy feelings of melancholy and excessive worrying mood swings irritability problems concentrating	low libido problems sleeping confusion signs similar to high estrogen levels: stress, depressive feelings, irritability, mood swings

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