Are your patients going through menopause? Encourage them to throw a party!

That’s what Halle Berry recently did to mark this stage of her life, and experts are applauding the concept.

Greer C. Halle Berry thinks menopause is a milestone that should be celebrated with a ‘shiesta’. Page Six. March 11, 2025.

“I love it. I love the idea of a party [because] you walk through the door to a whole new aspect of yourself,” Karen Adams, MD, OB/GYN and clinical professor at Stanford, Menopause Society-certified menopause specialist, tells MDLinx. 

A 'shiesta' to mark menopause

Berry is reported to be throwing what she refers to as a “shiesta” to celebrate her entry into menopause.

Greer C. Halle Berry thinks menopause is a milestone that should be celebrated with a ‘shiesta’. Page Six. March 11, 2025.

G Thomas Ruiz, MD, a board-certified OB/GYN at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, says one of the benefits of hosting a menopause party like Berry is doing is to bring together a group of people an individual can lean on for support.

“[Berry is] creating a support network for this change. Any time that you can get together a group of individuals with like circumstances who will help ease the tension can't be bad,” he says.

Mental health challenges during menopause

While some women welcome and embrace menopause with a party, experts say it can still be a challenging time for many women, particularly when it comes to mental health. "It's a very under-recognised aspect of perimenopause and menopause," Dr. Adams says.

“There’s a thing called perimenopausal mood instability, or PMI, that is more common than PMS… Nobody's ever heard of PMI, but up to 68% of women can experience it in perimenopause. So that's a time when we should really have a high index of suspicion and be thinking about, maybe I'm not clinically depressed, maybe I don't have generalised anxiety disorder, maybe I'm just perimenopausal,” Dr. Adams says.

Unlike in other life stages like puberty, pregnancy, and motherhood, Dr. Adams says the mental health symptoms faced during menopause can pose unique challenges.

“The main difference is the unpredictable nature of the mood symptoms and people's reaction to stressors and things like that,” she explains. “The difference with that and perimenopausal mood instability is it is completely unpredictable, and a woman never knows from day to day, when she gets up, how she's going to feel that day. And that's because her cycles and her hormone fluctuations have become dysregulated, and they're no longer predictable and consistent every month,” she says.

“But her hormone highs are higher, and the lows are lower, and you never know from day to day what's going to be happening hormonally. And that means you never know from day to day what's going to be happening with your mood.”