"How does endometriosis affect mental health?"

Endometriosis affects around 1 in 7 Australian women born between 1973 and 1978, by age 44 to 49 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2023). What that figure does not tell you is how much of that population is also carrying a significant mental health load. Research that has followed Australian women over decades has found that women with endometriosis have close to twice the odds of depression and anxiety compared to women without the condition. When I am working with clients with endometriosis, the mental health impact is not usually one thing. It is a cluster of things layered on top of each other, and the pain, which the world tends to focus on, is often not the loudest layer.

Written and reviewed by Natalia Cajide, Registered Psychologist (AHPRA PSY0002474316). 3 min read. Published 7 June 2026. Last reviewed 7 June 2026. Next review 7 June 2027.

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The diagnostic story

For many women, the mental health impact begins before the diagnosis arrives. Endometriosis takes, on average, between 6 and 8 years to diagnose in Australia, and self-reported figures are often longer. That is years of being told it is normal period pain, normal cramping, normal exhaustion. By the time the diagnosis arrives, what many women describe is a confused mix of relief and grief, alongside a learned doubt about whether to trust their body's signals at all. That learned doubt is not a small thing, and it does not resolve when the diagnosis is made. The companion guide on diagnostic trauma (G01) covers this in more depth.

The body, the future, and the relationships

Layered on top of the diagnostic story is the everyday work of living with the condition. The pain. The fatigue that does not match how much sleep you got. The medication and its side effects. The questions about fertility, which arrive whether or not the person is ready for them. The conversations with partners, family, employers, friends, most of them happening without a script. Each of these is, on its own, manageable. Together, they are often what produces the depression and anxiety the research is measuring.

A study of research findings published in 2023 by Delanerolle and colleagues found that across the available studies, depressive and anxiety symptoms in women with endometriosis were consistently more common than in matched controls (Delanerolle et al., 2023). What I take from numbers like this is not a prediction for any one person, but a confirmation that what many of my clients describe is recognisable and shared. The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, which follows women across decades, has documented the same pattern in Australian data specifically (Rowlands et al., 2023).

When to see a GP

A GP review is the right step when low mood has lasted most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more, or when anxiety is significantly affecting your sleep, work, or relationships. Many women with endometriosis carry these symptoms for longer than they need to because the symptoms can feel like an inevitable part of having the condition. They are not. They warrant their own assessment.

The mental health impact of endometriosis is not a sign that you are not coping well. It is a sign that you are carrying a real load, in a body that is also doing its own daily work of being unwell. The depression is not the failure. The depression is what tends to follow when too many layers stack up at once. Naming each layer, separately, is often where the loosening starts. Not because the layers go away, but because they become things that can be looked at, rather than things that are doing the looking for you. The companion guides on grief, the relational map, and invisible illness develop pieces of this further.

This content is general information only. It is not a substitute for individual psychological or medical advice. Reading this does not establish a therapeutic relationship with Equal Psychology or any of their clinicians.