It's no secret that women have experienced awful birth control side effects for decade.
However, it wasn't until a recent study revealed a correlation between contraceptives and a higher rate of depression that people realized it wasn't just in their heads. The most recent study on male birth control drove this point home after multiple men experienced suicidal thoughts in trials.
Revelist asked women to share their mental health experiences while on birth control to show that while protection and sexual health is vital to a woman's healthcare and sexual autonomy, there are definitely risks to be considered.
These are their stories.
Method: The Pill
"Honestly I can't say if [birth control] caused the depression or made my existing depression worse, but there is a difference between when I was on it and when I wasn't. The side effects are so much more than physical. Sure, it helped me stop getting painful ovarian cysts but it also destroyed my libido which put a lot of stress or my relationship as we just got married. I couldn't believe a pill I was taking to avoid getting pregnant was just making me not want to have sex at all, ever. I gained weight which caused self-esteem issues, all of it adding up to confidence issues. I know I have anxiety to begin with, but I hated the way birth control made me feel. I felt like a burden to [my husband], like he should've picked a better wife. I've been off it for three months now and finally feel back to normal, even if my normal is always riddled with a little anxiety and confidence issues. It's just nice not to have something make it so much worse. Every time I've taken birth control, my depression has gotten so bad that I've gone to therapy because I felt like I was losing control and constantly beating myself up over thinking there was something wrong with me. Hormones are crazy, and I don't think they do enough research on them or the drugs used to control them." — Anonymous, NJ
Method: The Pill
"I started taking hormonal birth control pills in my senior year of high school. I've always been pretty sensitive to migraines, but once I started taking the birth control they got way worse and more frequent. I would be in a fetal position in a dark room, barely able to speak or move. It was really scary, and I didn't quite understand it was from the birth control, so I started getting sleep studies and MRI's to check my brain and see what was going on. I became deeply anxious that there was something wrong with me, and even planned my suicide if I ended up having a brain cancer or any of the other scary things I was getting tested for. I finally visited my OB for a check up, and let her know what was happening to me and that I was on the pill, and she explained all the possible side effects: migraines, weight gain, depression, and so much more that I'd been noticing with myself. I've since switched to the IUD Paragard which is non-hormonal and infinitely better for me." — Anonymous, PA
Method: Implant
"I got the birth control implant like February-ish of my senior year of high school and honestly I didn't notice a difference at the time because 100% I was not looking for a difference. My doctor said 'rarely anyone' gets side effects and I should be fine. Then, I got a shore house for that summer and between the drinking and not feeling like myself and trying so hard to be happy I was just losing it all the time: getting too drunk, getting angry, crying, sleep paralysis got a million times worse, I started fights and got physical (which some would have been REALLY bad if I didn't physically get held back by my guy friends) and even though I didn't want to and in my head I was trying to make myself stop I just couldn't.
Then came freshman year of college, the worse year of my life. I got two underages the first two months, one of them was the second WEEK of school. I gained so much weight which I thought was because the "freshman 15" but being that I know how to commit to a workout and a diet I didn't understand what was wrong. The acne got even worse than I thought it could get previously so I was just beside myself. All of this was consistent for the next couple years I was always depressed, always insecure, always hated myself but not just enough to want to harm myself yet. Then came three years, which is when I had to get the implant removed for the next three-year implant, which they also make the dose higher for every time you replace, and that's when shit really hit the fan. I started getting suicidal thoughts and I became so worried about myself one morning. I woke up and started severely crying for about two hours before I went down to my mom and asked to take me anywhere, ANYWHERE because I'm scared about what I'm going to do.
My panic attacks started getting even more severe and coming more frequently. I was in bed almost all day almost every day I called off of work most of the time. I'm surprised I didn't get fired. I didn't go to class and sometimes when I would drive to class I would turn my car off trying to pep talk myself into going and I would just sit and cry for hours in my car before i could pep talk myself into even turning it on to drive home. I would have thoughts that I wanted to crash my car into another person's or drive it off a cliff, It was awful. I failed two classes and just barely passed the rest that semester which was last semester, then this past SUMMER came along. Again, didn't leave my bed, didn't work, didn't want to do anything or go anywhere. My mom and I were fighting all the time really bad. I was still having thoughts that I wanted to hurt myself and had the urge to so bad but at the same time I was also telling myself like 'wtf no I don't I don't want to hurt myself' but have the urge to so bad. When I come back to school and everything just got even worse. I didn't go to class once the first two weeks. I wanted to but didn't. I cried more, had more panic attacks, worsened suicidal thoughts.
I got it out a few days later, and now it's been most two months and I am back to my happy hyper self. I literally could not be happier. I feel like myself. It's really sucky sometimes when I think about how much I missed out on, but I'm just glad that I feel happy again." — Anonymous, PA
Method: The Pill
"I was started on birth control when I was 16 because I developed cysts on my ovaries. I went from being a really pleasant and happy teenager to being extremely moody. I would get angry extremely quickly, cry for no reason; I was very unhappy.
I remember joking around with my dad or brother and then all of a sudden getting angry with them and yelling. I'd be up at night crying and I couldn't figure out why. My boyfriend started pulling away because I was too hard to be around. It was not a good time.
We realize all this had started when I started birth control. My pill was switched and it got better and then I stayed on it because I was trying to be responsible. I finally stopped taking it when I learned more about the IUD. The procedure was beyond painful but it is so much better than taking a pill everyday." — Anonymous, PA
Method: The Pill
"I took some birth control for a whole year and I swore it was my PTSD. I stopped the birth control once my boyfriend and I broke up last year and OMG did I feel better. I was having panic attacks daily, weird outer body-ish experiences, thinking about weird things like jumping off bridges etc. I was trapped in my mind. I couldn't drive every day without being miserable. I am so leery to take it again because it was such a horrible year of mental and emotional pain.
I just remember telling [my doctor] all my symptoms and saying you're probably going to think I am crazy but… as she just smiled like what I was going through was normal or that every girl has been through this before. Right now I am on Yaz and at first I didn't feel very good for about three days but after that I was fine." — Anonymous, PA
Method: The Pill
"I was off birth control for a while and when I finally got back on, it fucked me up because it didn't mix well with the anxiety meds I started taking. It lasted for a couple days, I was so depressed. Like I mustered energy to go to class, but afterward all I could do is curl up in bed and cry. Like, constantly.
Dance is my favorite thing and I didn't even wanna go to that, I didn't wanna hangout with my roommate or my friends. After like one day, they noticed I was off though and like came to check on me and I was just crying in bed. That was the first time I had overwhelming suicidal thoughts, too. I just kept thinking about how sad I was and what would happen if I wasn't here anymore. It was scary, like I've had thoughts like that before but these were overwhelming.
So I had to change my anxiety medicine and now I'm all good. Well as good as I can be." — Anonymous, PA
Method: The Depo Shot
"I went on it my around senior year of HS before college. I was on the pill for seven years and have been on the depo for two years almost now. Especially after switching to the depo I noticed increased anxiety, panic/anxiety attacks, and even depression. I saw a counselor through my grad school for it (I was also going through major life changes of switching jobs, moving back home, then switching jobs again and moving across the state all on my own without telling even my parents who I lived with at the time or my new bf who was away for the army at the time). I also felt like I gained weight or at least couldn't lose it or tone up and this made my already horrible poor body image and sense of self-worth even worse. I don't know if it's the cycle of life changes I'm going through, the depo, or the fact that the quarterly injections seem to match up with he life changes and stress but it's definitely a problem." — Anonymous, PA
Method: The Pill
"I've never had any suicidal thoughts, but on my current and last birth control, I have had a huge increase in depression and mood swings. I will go through three to five days in a row where I constantly just feel miserable. I'll cry constantly and overall I'll just feel really depressed. I call it a funk. I realized it was probably the birth control because it happened monthly around the same time and when I didn't take birth control I never had any depression. It's really frustrating because [my fiancé] will ask me what he can do and I really have no answer for him. The other day he even asked me how I can not be so depressed. I had no answer for him. It just feels like nothing can help.
The biggest problem is that I have cysts on my ovary's so I have to take birth control. D said that birth-control with lower amounts of estrogen might help the depression but because of my cysts I have to take birth control that has a higher dosage. I originally talk to the doctor about getting a new birth control because I had lower libido. It is one of those situations where it is more important for me to not have cysts then to change the medication based on emotional health." — Anonymous, IL
Method: Yasmin Birth Control Pill
"Yasmin made me super emotional when I was on it. I was in high school and already having issues with depression, but then my gyno put me on Yasmin and every little thing made me cry. And I didn't know why. Once I switched I was back to being regular levels of depressed, rather than off-the-charts levels of depressed." — Anonymous, NYC
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