Nicola Bulley 10

[lemmein]

Fuck it, I'm opening another one. If the mods delete it fair enough.

I don't believe the menopause or even alcoholism explains a woman vanishing into thin air with no evidence left behind.

This whole case stinks!

People are talk about menopause when they mean perimenopause.
The date of menopause is one year after the last period, average age for this is 52.

Normal (not early) perimenopause can start at 45 and is when hormones can fluctuate causing mood swings, hot flushes erratic periods etc and this can go on for years before periods stop.

I can understand why the Diving expert is pissed off, he leant his professional services and extensive resources to this search and key information was withheld. It is all very bizarre.

If you had good reason to believe she'd gone on a bender , even was possibly suicidal and was maybe holed up at a friends house - and you didn't want to wash her dirty laundry in public, because that would be disloyal and hard on her children , when she returned - but simply appeal to her to come back, that is exactly how many people might play it i imagine. A bit of a humane balancing act, while trying not to actually compromise the search efforts should your hoped for outcome not be correct

Every where I’ve read has said she was struggling because she had an early menopause. So I think for her it was menopause rather than peri menopause.

Can't anyone else envisage a scenario where there was excess alcohol, her being maybe disruptive, maudlin, a row about any number of things, shouting, any kind of knee jerk threats or lashing out....police called because PA was angry or afraid or fed up with her drinking over Christmas. She goes missing, he loves her, is a worrier, over reacts to make a point and dials 999. Police quiz him , pushed, he digs deep and says, well, she's had a few nights of heavy drinking lately and says the menopause is making her feel unwell, unsettled, etc etc. Please take those morsels from an otherwise perfectly normal family life, it gets documented. That's all they've got and they run with it.

I once called 111 for agonising toothache and, to emphasise the pain, said I'd taken 4 paracetamol and 2 ibuprofen at once. They sent an ambulance for a suspected overdose!

I don't think this menopause and alcohol is relevant.

My God, we are now judging women by what they wear? Another fantastic new low for a site aimed at women. Since when did a black sleeveless dress become inappropriate business attire. We must issue an alert to business women worldwide, because items like that will be in nigh on every one of their wardrobes for the office.

Yes this is entirely possible.

Also, as the "investigation" was ongoing, things must have been difficult in the following weeks between them

Whatever the rights (are there any?) and the wrongs of the police putting private matters into the public domain, there is not a shadow of a doubt that this has backfired on them enormously and they are being roundly eviscerated across the board. If they thought yesterday's car crash of a presser was going to resolve things, then they undid all that with the preposterous decision to release info on her mental state. Absolute fucking car crash, and it's difficult to see how a serious case review won't happen now

Average age of menopause is 52 but perimenopause starts before that. Current NICE guidelines state that from age 45 HRT can be given if symptoms fit perimenopause.

My perimenopause started at 46. I had terrible symptoms and thought I was going mad. Many women think this as knowledge of perimenopause even amongst women is still scant.

Suicide in women is highest for 46-49 year olds which ( for most women) is peak perimenopause age. For many women perimenopause is sheer hell. Anxiety, panic attacks, black doom laden thoughts, no joy in anything. All caused by a lack of oestrogen which if replaced by HRT in many cases totally reverses the symptoms.

Of course some women have early menopause - which simply means a year without periods.

Yes absolutely.
Though PF should have been trusted with all the information on Nicola in order to form the most apt search plan (on land as well as in river he appears to believe) . Maybe the Police themselves asked Paul not to reveal that to PF though, as they obviously wanted to instruct PF where to search and were trying to avoid having a loose cannon. In that case PF would now be disgruntled with them not Paul - and this appears to be the case

Oh fuck off with that sexist bullshit

That probably said it better

What a vivid imagination. You know none of this and it doesn't help anything. Just fantasy.

Tbf, Paul was saying the right things about their perfect life but you could tell he was not genuinely feeling it which is why some people felt that something was off. It was certainly emotionally tense stuff, not the acute pain of the love of one's life missing.

It is sad that even in the middle of a tragedy, everything has to get given that facebook-style clean up by various parties to keep the show going on. It must have really added to her negative feelings before her disappearance.

They’ve cocked up the communication from the start. I said ages ago this wasn’t a suicide because there were no signs of it, the family would know something if that was likely and that the police would have labelled her as vulnerable when first putting it out there she was missing.

It turns out that was actually the case, they should have just said she was vulnerable on day 1 and could she get in touch if she hears this - that’s what they do in every other missing persons case. There would have been no need to divulge details then.

She’s clearly not in that section of the river as it’s been thoroughly searched. If she’d walked further down stream the dog would have followed. The most likely thing appears that she went through the gate away from the water and the dog couldn’t follow, and was then apparently running between bench and gate.

Paul’s interview makes sense in the context that she’s never done anything like this before, he might not have wanted attention on the alcohol issues (social services might get involved) and he felt pressured into commenting publicly to try and help find her.

The police yesterday by throwing the vulnerable angle out there 3 weeks in were always going to create more questions, it was predictable the extra info would have to be released.

You can’t just presume that suicide is what’s happened just because she had these issues going off. She might have had problems but she was still functioning well as a mother and holding down a good job. It feels like they’ve wasted too much time on the river when it’s more likely she’s on land somewhere within half a mile of that bench. You also can’t categorically rule out third party involvement, they need to find her body first.

Lancs police really should have got some advice on how to handle this.

It looked to me like PA was running a unilateral media / communications programme with his own agenda from the start.

It was very usual that he did that first interview in the car park, followed up by the voice note direct to Sky and then the C5 doc seemingly without or even against police guidance.

Where was the usual appeal?

There was very little response to the statement in the papers today. I feel it was a turning point at which communication tails off. In the end, the tragedy belongs to close family, the professionals swiftly move on when it is not making them look good.

With who?

So what will happen now? Are they still gonna search or just stop and put her into forever missing persons?

Does anyone know how police communications work? I appreciate there are senior officers directing the investigation - but is there a separate (perhaps civilian side) that deals with media communications? I know in finance, there is a corp comms team and any media communications has to be as directed by them.

I honestly don’t think anyone is suggesting raging alcoholism tbh. Maybe just self medicating with a few drinks if feeling overwhelmed. Menopause does funny things to a woman’s mind and whilst we know alcohol is unlikely to help it can blot out certain feelings. Menopause can make a woman fly off the handle. Maybe that’s why the police attended on 10 January.

Why would you want to minimise the impact of significant alcohol issues and menopause on someone’s emotional state?

None of us have any idea of the extent or otherwise.

The menopause line is unjustified whichever way you look at it. Wtaf do the police know about it? They are not medical experts to announce it as a reason for anything. She may have offered this information herself (or Paul may have) but that still does not give them the right to capitalize on it to improve their own optics.

Disgraceful misogynistic comment.

Reported.