Get Healthy

Mood swings in women can be caused by a range of things—from serious mental illness to temporary situations that make one happy or sad.

“The term ‘mood swings’ is used somewhat loosely,” says Jaswinder Singh, PhD, HSSP, a licensed clinical psychologist and licensed mental health therapist at Mid-American Psychological and Counseling Services in Merrillville.

Singh explains that life’s situations—single motherhood, financial struggle, trying to balance career and home life—can bring on mood swings that are not psychiatrically based but rather resulting from stress. Stress that, if not addressed by adequate support and help, can ultimately lead to psychiatric illness.

The most serious “mood swing” is seen in women who are bipolar (it used to be called manic-depression), in which days or weeks are spent in a very depressed state, followed by a period of extreme happiness.

The change is not rapid or in short spurts, Singh says. And bipolar disorder, a serious psychiatric illness, can be genetically based.

Other mood swings in women have to do with hormones and biochemical changes at different times in a woman’s life, such as the premenstrual cycle, postpartum depression after the birth of a child, and menopause.

Oftentimes, family members notice rapid changes in mood due to these situations and find it difficult to interact with the woman, Singh explains. “Sometimes I hear from someone that the woman is ‘a different person’ just before a menstrual period,” says Singh, who explains that some women may take medication ten days before a period to ward off severe mood swings.

Young women also have mood swings due to biological and psychological changes, and Singh warns that oftentimes it is during this period that schizophrenia manifests itself. Anger and defiance demonstrated in mood swings in young women often have environmental and genetic factors (a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder, for instance) that play a role, he says.

Elderly women with mood swings may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, or they may be in a living situation that makes them very lonely, Singh says.

Willie Perry, telephone counselor and coordinator of the crisis line at the Crisis Center in Gary, counsels many women with mood swings (from those living with bipolar disorder to others in environmental situations described by Singh). Perry says that feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair from life’s challenges (not being able to help the family, be understood or be accepted) typically bring a change in mood. But oftentimes, it can be helped with some time and attention.

“I ask whether the woman has had her hormones checked, been checked out by a doctor for something serious and whether she is on medication,” Perry says. ”But I have found that really, so many just need someone to listen to them, someone who cares how they feel, someone to help them do research into what they are feeling.

“And 95 percent of the people I talk to end our call by saying, ‘Thank you; you have helped me.’”