Three out of four people going through menopause will experience symptoms and one in four will find them severe enough to affect day-to-day life, Skills for Health says. A Cardiff University-led scoping review of 84 studies mapped research collected up to June 2025 and found that menopause care still breaks down because women are not heard early enough, symptoms are normalised and access to evidence-based treatment depends too much on geography and income. The review is a global snapshot rather than a clinical trial, but its findings land squarely in the UK, where perimenopause still sits between NHS access, private clinics and workplace support.
Menopause is a natural stage of life that usually occurs between 45 and 55. Menopause and perimenopause usually affect women between 45 and 55, can happen earlier and affect anyone who has periods. Those symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, sleep disturbance, mood changes, brain fog, joint pain and irregular bleeding.
NICE's menopause guideline aims to improve the consistency of support and information, and a UK primary care menopause guideline says 80% of women will have stopped having periods by 54. The government’s 2024 Shattering the Silence about Menopause report includes perimenopause and menopause in its definition of menopause. The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee published Menopause and the workplace on 28 July 2022.
The British Menopause Society says there were almost 5.5 million employed women in the UK by the end of 2024, and NHS England’s menopause-in-the-workplace questionnaire says menopausal women are the fastest-growing demographic at work. The care gap spills into private HRT consultations, symptom-tracking tools, supplements, coaching and digital care when NHS appointments are hard to secure or advice is inconsistent.
NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight produced a menopause training and resource guide in April 2025, with e-learning and certificate programmes for nurses and other primary-care staff.