Menopause drop-in cafe launches at LilyAnne’s in Hartlepool

The drop-in menopause cafe provides women with a calm, safe environment where they can talk about their experiences of going through the menopause and receive advice.

Hartlepool and Stockton Health started the service in the hope to help people navigate the menopause easier.

The drop-in cafe works as a listening space and treatments are not offered although people could be signposted towards the next steps they might want to take.

"We wanted to look at how we might be able to help and to support them,” said nurse lead Lin Greenfield.

"But, instead of making it a clinical setting, what we wanted was to create a calm, relaxed, safe space for women to come and talk.

Lin added: "For some women, that might be the first time that they have been able to express how they are feeling about their symptoms.”

The menopause is when periods stop due to lower hormone levels.

It usually happens between the ages of 45 and 55 and could cause a range of symptoms, including anxiety, mood swings, brain fog, hot flushes and irregular periods.

Symptoms can start years before periods actually stop.

Hartlepool and Stockton Health communications coordinator Kit Wake said it is hoped the drop-in cafe will start a wider conversation about the menopause.

“I think previous generations have had a very stoic attitude about it,” said Kit.

"You don’t complain, you just carry on. And I think it’s actually harming people to have this attitude of silence and this attitude that it’s not a big deal, because actually it’s a fundamental change in everything that you understand about who you are as a person.

"I think we need to start talking about it as something that is life-changing but not life-defining.”

The Hartlepool cafe launched in February and takes place every Thursday between 2pm and 3.30pm at LilyAnne’s Coffee Bar, in Victoria Road.

Angela Arnold, director at LilyAnne’s, said: "As long as they want to use it, this space will be available.”

A service also runs in Stockton’s Remember Me Tea Rooms.

Anyone is welcome, regardless of which GP Practice they are registered at.