"If estrogen modulates psychosis, it might explain why schizophrenic symptoms in menstruating women were less severe than those in men..."

"... and why these women needed lower doses of antipsychotics to control them. It might even be protective enough to delay onset for a number of years. Sudden, dramatic fluctuations in estrogen during perimenopause, the months or years before a woman stops menstruating, might explain why a woman with no previous history of mental illness might suddenly come down with a bad case of psychosis. And the absence of estrogen after menopause might explain why a woman’s psychotic symptoms could suddenly resemble those of a very young man.... Researchers around the world began to explore the connections between psychosis and estrogen at every phase of a woman’s life.... In 2013, premenstrual dysphoric disorder became an official diagnosis in the new revision of the DSM, an acknowledgment that for 5.5 percent of women, the phase usually known as PMS can be debilitating, contributing to severe depression, lost days of work, dangerous ruptures in relationships, and even suicide. Older feminists opposed the classification, arguing that it made a pathology of being female, but younger feminists disagreed...."

From "Listening to Estrogen Hormones have always been a third rail in female mental health. They may also be a skeleton key" (New York Magazine).