Birth Control Pills Tied To Depressive Mood Changes In Women

Birth control has long been sold as the ultimate life hack for women. They tell us to just pop the pill if we don’t want kids right now or if we’re having irregular cycles (even though there’s a possibility of oral contraceptives making it worse). The media likes to downplay the side effects of birth control, but new studies are showing that maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology finds that oral contraceptives can lead to depressive-like patterns of thinking. Researchers found that women taking oral contraceptives exhibited stronger depression-like cognitive patterns, especially during the hormone-active phase of their pill cycle. And if you’re someone who already struggles with mood, these awful side effects might hit you even harder.

The Science Behind the Pill 

In this study, 53 women who took combined oral contraceptives (those with both estrogen and progestin) went through a battery of mood and cognitive tests during two phases of their cycle: the active phase (when they were on hormones) and the inactive phase (when they weren’t).

Self-reported mood profiles showed that participants experienced more negative moods, including depression, during the inactive phase of the oral contraceptive cycle. However, the cognitive tests painted a different picture: during the active hormone phase, participants – especially those with pre-existing higher levels of depressive symptoms – displayed stronger depressive-like patterns on tasks designed to measure mood processing.

“Notably, 29% of participants exhibited elevated depression scores during both testing sessions,” Psypost.org noted. “In this subgroup, depression levels were comparable to those observed in outpatients diagnosed with anxiety or mild to moderate depression.”

According to the study, "The present findings reinforce the possibility of depressive mood effects associated with OC [oral contraceptive] usage."

None of this surprises us, as this isn’t the first study to link birth control with mood changes. Back in 2016, researchers in Denmark analyzed over a million women and found that those on hormonal contraceptives were more likely to be prescribed antidepressants. And yet, most of us aren’t hearing about these studies at the doctor’s office or seeing them on the front page news. Why?

Pharmaceutical companies and the broader medical industry have a vested interest in keeping birth control at the top of the list. Add in societal pressures to make birth control accessible and palatable, and you’ve got a perfect storm of silence around its downsides. It’s easier to paint hormonal birth control as a harmless, empowering choice for women than to admit that it might be messing with our brains and bodies negatively.

The narrative around birth control has become so rigid that questioning its safety can feel like heresy. But if research shows that women in this study had depressive symptoms comparable to those with clinical depression, isn’t it time to reevaluate? As someone who used to be depressed, depression can impact everything in your life, from your relationships to your career and overall well-being. 

We’ve been conditioned to think birth control is the only way to manage our reproductive health. But there are alternatives out there. Natural family planning, for example, is effective when done correctly. Non-hormonal IUDs exist. Condoms and safe sex are still very much a thing. You could adjust your nutrition and activity to align with the different phases of your cycle. Some women could argue that these options might not be as convenient as a pill they take at the same time every morning, but if the trade-off is your mental health, I think it’s worth reconsidering what we’ve been taught to accept as the default. 

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