When it comes to choosing the right contraception, most of the advice I’ve received has been anecdotal. It’s an experience I likely share with women across the UK: despite the massive impact hormonal contraception can have on your body, trying to work out what’s right for you can often feel a bit like taking shots in the dark. And that’s before we’ve factored in the long list of side effects many of us have suffered during this long, arduous and often unsuccessful process.

Of course, the lack of research into women’s health – especially when it comes to the contraceptive pill – is one of the main reasons why this continues to be the case.

It’s an issue that was recently flagged by Davina McCall in her Channel 4 documentary The Pill Revolution. The documentary – which aired last week – criticised the “massive black hole” in research surrounding the pill, which has barely evolved since its creation in 1950s. 

Despite remaining the most popular form of contraception in the UK (figures obtained by The Guardian in 2019 found that more than 3.1 million people were prescribed the combined or ‘mini pill’ in 2017-18) research into the pill and its side effects remains limited, with many women reporting symptoms including low mood, anxiety, insomnia and even memory loss.  

However, over the last couple of years, it seems as if we’ve started to see a shift. Just this week, we’ve seen the publication of one of the largest and most wide-ranging studies into the link between low mood and the combined contraceptive pill to date.

The study, which was published in the journal Epidemiology And Psychiatric Sciences, was based on the experiences of 264,557 women who volunteered to share their data through the UK biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource. 

The results were damning. According to the study, the women who began taking a contraceptive pill as teenagers had a 130% higher risk of developing depression and those who started taking it as adults were at a 92% higher risk. While the researchers did find that that risk goes down after taking the pill for two years, they found that those who started taking the pill as teenagers experienced an increased incidence of depression even after they stopped taking the pill.

“Although contraception has many advantages for women, both medical practitioners and patients should be informed about the side-effects identified in this and previous research,” said Therese Johansson, one of the researchers leading the study from the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University.

Johansson emphasised that “most women tolerate external hormones well, without experiencing negative effects on their mood” – making combined contraceptive pills “an excellent option for many women”. And of course, there are lots of benefits of being on the pill. 

“Contraceptive pills enable women to avoid unplanned pregnancies and they can also prevent illnesses that affect women, including ovarian and uterine cancer,” Johansson said. “However, certain women may have an increased risk of depression after starting to use contraceptive pills.”

On the surface, this research may sound like bad news – especially when you consider the number of women who currently take the combined pill. But it’s also a sign of progress.

Why? Because this research confirms something many of us have known anecdotally for years. To most of us, it’s not news – but it is undebatable, scientific proof of a reality so many women have experienced. However frustrating it may be, it’s research like this that is needed for doctors and medical professionals to fully accept these reports and adapt their work.

When consider alongside last week’s Channel 4 documentary, this research could also be seen as a sign that things are changing. After decades of relative silence on the impact of the pill, the conversation finally seems to be taking up space, whether that’s on our TV screens or in labs around the country.

That’s good news – not just for those of us taking the pill now, but for future generations whose experience will be shaped by the research being conducted and published today.  

Images: Getty