Three hundred Swedish women are to take part in a two-year study to determine whether the modern contraceptive pill leads to mood swings or a decreased libido.
Many women give up taking the pill as they believe they are experiencing a lack of sex drive or feeling side effects like feeling down.
However, researchers at the Umea University Hospital are of the opinion that many women imaging these side effects because of what they have heard about how previous contraceptive pills affected users rather than what is actually the case with the newest pills available.
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Marie Bixo is in charge of the study, which will see 300 women from Stockholm, Uppsala, Umea, Linkoping and Orebro be given either birth control pills or sugar pills.
Bixo explained that many women stop taking the pills because of “perceived side effects” and choose less secure methods or nothing at all which sometimes leads to unplanned pregnancies. She noted that it was normal for women to feel bad at some stages of their lives and that it was easy to put it down to hormones but, she added, mood effects from the pill were not as common as many believe.
A recent study found that around 50 per cent of young Swedes don’t use condoms with a new partner, while 30 per cent take no contraceptive measures. Despite Sweden’s teenage pregnancy rate being a low 0.7 per cent of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 giving birth yearly, abortion rates are high.
The Scandinavian country had also seen a huge rise in demand for the morning after pill.