The MoonPhase Approach

Menopause-Informed Psychiatric Care for Women in Midlife—Pattern-Driven, Precise, and Coherent.


Clinical Lead

Michele Whitaker, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, C-RYT


Michele is a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner with over 32 years in Psychiatric Nursing.

Michele’s work centers on women in midlife—where mood, sleep, anxiety, cognition, and vitality are often shaped by hormonal transition, stress physiology, and the cumulative weight of lived experience.

MoonPhase reflects Michele’s conviction that menopausal mental health deserves more than a symptom checklist. Her approach is clinically grounded and intentionally paced, integrating psychiatric evaluation and medication strategy when appropriate with therapeutic support, nervous system support tools, and menopause-informed education.

Michele is certified in Nutritional Psychiatry and is a certified Hatha and Laughter Yoga teacher (C-RYT). These modalities support a whole-person approach that honors both biology and meaning—helping women build steadier internal ground, clearer self-trust, and practical change they can live inside.

Michele brings deep respect for the intelligence of women’s bodies—and for the clarity that becomes possible when midlife is treated as a legitimate neurobiological transition.

‍ ‍ Professional Affiliations

  • The Menopause Society(NAMS)•

  • International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR)•

  • Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA).

  • Massachusetts Association of Advanced Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners (MAAPN).

  • Massachusetts Coalition of Nurse Practitioners (MCNP).

  • Association of Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner (AAPNP).

  • American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP).

Why MoonPhase

MoonPhase reflects a cyclical view of Women’s Mental Health.

Midlife often changes thresholds—what your system can tolerate, recover from, and carry without cost. What’s been muted, managed, or overridden for years can become impossible to ignore. It can show up as a pattern or singular: sleep shifts and becomes lighter, anxiety arises or sharpens and less predictable, attention and executive function feel less reliable and more effort, mood carries more edge or more tenderness, or both, and desire changes in texture, intensity and timing- sometimes dramatically.

MoonPhase was created for that reality. Hormones, stress physiology, and nervous system load do not move in straight lines; they move in rhythms and waves-monthly, seasonal, and across life stages. influenced by reproductive cycles, hormonal transitions, accumulated stress, caregiving, career demands, and the body’s adaptive response over time. When care ignores those rhythms, women are often left with a checklist that does not explain what’s happening.

What Women Often Say

I don’t feel like myself.
My capacity has changed.
What used to work doesn’t work anymore.
I want care that takes this seriously, without reducing it.

Across perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, the brain and body are renegotiating

  • Estrogen and Progesterone signaling: As estrogen and progesterone signaling changes, it can reshape how the nervous system regulates stress and threat response—through pathways that influence serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and pain processing.
    This can show up as body-based anxiety, sudden stress activation, irritability or rage, mood changes, heightened sensitivity to caffeine/alcohol/medications, shifts in libido/arousal, and a “new” intensity to everyday stressors.

  • Neurochemistry and Cognitive Drive: Changes in neurotransmitter balance can affect focus, motivation, pleasure, and reward sensitivity. Many women describe it simply as: “I’m not myself.”
    It may take more effort to concentrate, initiate tasks, feel drive, or access the same baseline joy and steadiness.

  • Metabolic and Energy Context: Midlife can also involve a shift in metabolic resilience—fatigue, afternoon crashes, reduced mental stamina, slower recovery from stress. This is where we consider contributors like insulin sensitivity, thyroid changes, inflammation, micronutrient status, and the body’s overall “energy economy”.

  • Sleep Architecture, Nervous System Load, and Sexual Response & Identity: Sleep disruption can mimic or magnify anxiety, depression, and ADHD symptoms—and is often the first domino.
    Common patterns include 3am waking, adrenaline surges, night sweats, vivid dreams, and a body that won’t fully downshift.

    At the same time, sexuality and identity may shift: desire may diminish or fluctuate; body image, grief, anger, disorientation, and relational dynamics can intensify. Pleasure is deeply connected to sleep, stress, relationship, and self-perception—not just hormones.

    This is not a single symptom so to speak, it is a systemic transition.

At MoonPhase, we track the pattern, We look at the whole picture- sleep, mood, cognition, irritability, rage, motivation, libido, and the emotional meaning of this chapter- so you can understand what’s shifting, why it is shifting, and what supports you now.

Change in mid-life is often less about collapse and more about recalibration.

‍ What this Practice is Built For

MoonPhase is built for women who sense that “something is shifting”- and want care that treats midlife mental health as a real neurobiological transition, not a vague phase to endure.

This practice is designed to:

  • Map the full pattern ( mood, sleep, anxiety, cognition, stress physiology, and desire) rather than isolating a single symptom.

  • Offer thoughtful psychiatric care and therapeutic support, paced for depth rather than volume.

  • Translate the patterns into a practical plan -so you know what’s happening and what to do next

  • Support agency and steadiness through education, clinical reasoning, and a whole person, holistic treatment planning.

  • Education and clinical reasoning that helps you understand what’s shifting, and what to do next.

  • A steady, respectful pace—designed for depth rather than volume.

  • Illuminating the biology shaping midlife.

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    Practice Details

  • Menopause-Informed Integrative Psychiatry for Women Located in Massachusetts.

  • Primarily Telehealth with options for in person as applicable to availability and schehduling (Hybrid)

  • Limited Hours and By Appointment Only.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday 10am -5pm EST.


If this approach feels aligned, the next step is to request a consultation.

All prospective patients begin by submitting the Consultation Request form

before scheduling and initial appointment.

Submission does not establish a provider–patient relationship.

If you are experiencing acute distress, thoughts of self-harm, or a medical emergency,

call 911, go to your nearest emergency department, or call or text 988.

Consultation Request
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