I have been talking about this situation on a couple of other threads. All too often, women are being effectively treated like they have hysteria.
Women are treated abysmally within the NHS. I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the dire state of women's care must be due to the structure of modern medicine being designed by men. Either that or sheer bloody mindedness.
Through inadequate treatment, I've been suffering to the point I became so ill I no longer wanted to live. And it wasn't because I was depressed, it was because hormone levels were so low, my neurotransmitters were at inadquate levels and it affected my brain. Also the emotional frustration of not getting treatment. What I went through made me wonder how many women are sectioned without their hormone status ever being considered?
Peri-menopause can give you terrible symptoms, including depression. But all too frequently - almost universally - GPs dismiss the physical cause and prescribe the anti-depressants.
Often the assumption is that the 'depression' is the cause in itself as opposed to a symptom of underlying inbalance/illness.
It's not just peri-menopause/menopause either, many are unaware of the huge scandal around treatment of thyroid illness in women (women often develop TI around peri-menopause or a ramping up of pre-existing illness because of the effect of excess oestrogen on takeup of thyroid hormone) If a woman does not respond to standard thyroid treatment she is effectively screwed, unless she fights the system or hops from gp to gp to gp in hope of finding one who is even halfway informed.
Inadequately treated women can look forward to increasing ill health with serious knock on consequences, including early menopause. Even with new NICE guidelines, doctors are on the whole woefully uninformed about how to properly dose for optimal health or even interpret results. Stories here of women developing premature osteoporosis - it's bleak, but I have heard it before, some even develop heart disease. There is no accountability.
If women go to the GP with a set of 'soft' symptoms, - difficulty concentrating, lethargy/motivation, achy muscles, feeling emotionally off, racing thoughts, maybe losing her hair - the likelihood of the GP doing a detailed hormone profile and looking for optimal ranges (that's another thing) - as opposed to attributing it to 'stress' and dispensing ADs at least initially, is low. Especially if she has young children or has just given birth - well then it's often just a given.
If you already have a medical history of depression you will almost certainly fall foul of diagnostic overshadowing. I regret ever talking about my low feelings to my GP. Once 'low mood or depression' is on your notes, it often affects the direction of all future care, and how seriously you will be heard thereafter.
I know women who scrape their pennies - some of these women are so ill they can no longer work - to get privately treated or dispensed medicines which should freely available on the NHS.
And what is the point of it being available if women face a system where misogyny is so rife and their needs are so under prioritised that they can't access it through ignorance! Ignorance of some pretty basic things pertaining to how women's bodies work! So they ask and are met with umbrage or flat out refusal.
All the time I was ill and undiagnosed I was told:
'you're stressed' if I said I wasn't stressed, I was asked "how could I not be stressed with 2 children under 5?" And treated like I was in denial.
"of course you're finding life difficult, you don't earn very much and are a single parent" If I reacted incredulously to this, or refused a prescription of ADs I was told I was being 'oppositional and non cooperative'
Actually told once that because I was a young woman of carribbean origin and a minority group, I should expect to experience more 'life challenges' and stress and this was the cause of my inability to sleep.
Asked about my income
Asked about relationship status
Told by one professional she "had heard it all before from many women'" and some pain relief in combination with ADs always worked.
At one point I actually started gaslighting my own self.
All the time I was suffering from extreme peri-menopausal symptoms caused by untreated thyroid illness. But even when treated, I faced even more difficulties when my treatment didn't work. Even printing out NICE guidelines only resulted in a hostile response. As if I was questioning their professionalism.
Anyway this post is too long but my god it's awful. Until I encountered it I had no idea. I now am struggling to pay for private help. I am far from unique.