Good article today - BBC - sex bias in medics leads to misdiagnosis & delays

[SardineReturns]

here

This is very interetsing and supports a lot of other info that has been coming out recently around this topic. The biggest story recently was the difference in likliehood of death with heart attack - as women and men have different symptoms and men's are "default" - women having heart atatcks are simply not recognised.

A converse to this is that often when they know there is something wrong, we are expected to put up with it:

• Massive issues with mental health and teenage girls, has anything been done?
• Vaginal mesh scandal - went on for YEARS with women living in incredible pain, life ruining issues, just being told to get on with it, the root cause being dismissed, running on for years after they knew there were problems
• Birth injuries even pretty extreme ones being approached as a nrmal part of life for a woman who has had children and not treated / not treated properly

The article talks about the irony of some conditions having symptoms of anxiety and depression, and so that's the only thing that gets treated. The other point here that many on these boards raise is that there is no digging into the rates of anxiety / depression in girls and women to understand why the rates are so high. The physical causes are mentioned in this article, the point about it being a reaction to things in their lives / treatment by society is never addressed. The underlying cause is not investigated often because it's something that no-one really wants to hear - and so teenage girls & young women especially are just seen as generally unstable >> feeding back into the unconscious biases the article mentions.

In case we get any what about the men - for sure there are issues around mental health and medical treatment, they are different though, this thread is about the particular issues women face.

Note as well that the link on the front page said that we get treated differently due to our sex - while the actual article refers to this as gender. I have no doubt that transwomen suffer bias in the medical system, I would imagine transmen too - or does some of their new identity mean they get taken more seriously, listened to more? Does it depend on how well they pass - is there a point where biases work in their favour?

Anyway - also touches on other factors of bias - race, wealth etc. The sex bias cuts across everyone though - a wealthy woman might just as easily be deemed "neurotic" as a poor one. In fact, wealthy women are often presented in this way, aren't they. As self absorbed and a bit unstable.

Anyway, interesting. Now they need to do something.

Missed a bit!

I meant to say:

"Massive issues with mental health hormonal contraception and teenage girls, has anything been done?

There is also this; www.buzzfeed.com/hazelshearing/the-law-is-set-to-be-changed-after-menstruating-women-were?utm_term=.fh0N8j6Yo#.wd1B5W2zK

It was a good read but what it is describing is how sexism leads to sex discrimination in healthcare.

What the buzzfeed article is articulating is indirect discrimination in police custody.

I do wish people writing about these things would recognise that.

Which people writing what things?

I don't see the two articles as linked really. Apart from they are about women, but the issues are different.

They are both examples of institutional sex discrimination. Neither article refers to the problem as discrimination. This is why it is important to refer to the problem as discrimination because then the problems become linked rather than it being one problem with this thing that is here and another totally different and unconnected problem with that problem over there.

*unconnected thing with

Oh I see - got you now.

I suppose it isn't mentioned in such bald terms, no, just alluded to.

The stories are shocking though so while it's this thing over here and that thing over there, there's no question that they are bad, and in the first story it's clear that it's systemic.

Really interesting article SardineReturns
It reminds me of the orchestras that changed their interview process so it became ‘blind’. This was in reaction to the fact that there are a very small number of women in orchestras.
The interviewees entered the room before the panel got there (so they couldn’t hear their footsteps and infer their sex) Then they were positioned behind a screen.
So the panel weren’t able to bring their unconscious biases against women into their decision.

After the various people played and the panel chose the new orchestra members, the percentage of women was vastly higher than normal. Proving that despite people thinking they are immune to prejudice, they behave in biased ways. The same process also positively affected people of colour.

It’s hard to think what the comparable solution would be clinically as you can’t do a ‘blind’ medical examination. Perhaps, educating doctors that they need to acknowledge the statistics of bias and that there needs to be a check list of best practice that is completed for patients so that women and other discriminated groups can access the same level of treatment as white men.

Another thing that’s linked (and I’ve seen referred to on the MN boards) is that medication and treatments are usually tested for working on male bodies. So, women are often being prescribed drugs that are unsuitable for their physiology.

I guess the root of all of these issues is that men are used as the majority default human being with women classed as a small subset whose differing bodies are seen as not important enough to research in their own right. Strange when we are in fact 51% - 52% of the population

I think this web site

genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/

Gives some examples of how much science was based on male bodies only until very recently.

Brilliant link, thanks MidgeBabe

Interesting article

I did mention the heart attack thing to my dad and dh the other day

They both looked at me as if id gone mad and i had to fucking google it so i could PROVE it

Plonkers

I've name changed for this as it will make me identifiable. I hope it won't derail the discussion, I'm offering this up as an example of how systematic bias against women has an impact beyond our own health. As the primary carers of children, we're more likely to be the ones who take our children to the GP, and I believe the bias is still present and mothers are more likely to be dismissed and fobbed off even when children are symptomatic of serious illness.

One of my children is quite poorly with a disease that impacts bone marrow production. I know a lot of other parents of seriously ill children who are either oncology or haemotology patients.

Without having done any formal research, and purely based on conversations had with other parents, it is a very common occurrence to hear from mothers that they were dismissed by GPs for months, told it's just a virus. Still a virus. Are you back again? I told you it was a virus! At this point the child has lost 5kg in weight and sleeps most of the day.

Mothers threatened with social services if they take their child back to the doctors one more time. Mothers being told that their very young child's sudden and dramatic personality change combined with complete loss of co-ordination and balance is perfectly normal and stop worrying.

This can go on for months until either mum bypasses the GP and goes straight to A&E, or dad gets sick of mum being fobbed off by the GP and takes the child up himself. Dad seems to be a bit more successful than mum at getting a referral to hospital.

I can't say for sure how common this is, only that it does seem to happen time and time again.

One word: Endometriosis.
1 in 10 women are said to suffer from this awful condition but are dismissed by doctors and told 'its just period pain'. I was told mine was IBS and stress. 10 years later I had to have 7 hour surgery to separate my bowels, uterus, and abdominal wall. They were all stuck together by adhesions and scar tissue caused by the Endometriosis. I have no doubt that endometriosis would be taken more seriously if it affected men too.

I have experienced this and experienced this with my children. I thought it was partly due to the fact that I also look different and speak differently. Light skinned male H now takes the children to all GP appointments. H has also noted the difference in response in the past when, if we both went, how I was listened to as opposed to him.

On the converse I have heard men give accounts regarding them being treated differently/inadequately by female health and social care staff, for example quickly labelled aggressive for making an assertive complaint regarding midwifery treatment of his partner (female partner confirmed his account and not an abusive relationship as far as I am aware although of course abuse can be well hidden. Unclear how accurate but interesting. Maybe the predominant gender of a profession as well as the research base has an impact.

MySadStory - reminds me of the thing where the docs & SS labelled women who would not stop trying to get treatment for their kids as abusive.

Lot of docs ddidn't used to like to be challenged, I am sure ti still goes on. So a woman - a woman! - who questions is seen as a real troublemaker.

Not sure junior as GP is a very female friendly job and there are stacks of women GPs.

I think it's a medic thing. I understand that sounds sweeping but certainly in days gone by their word was god and how much this has changed I'm not sure. They are the experts and no experts like to be questioned by layman, especially ones who they have unconscious bias towards thinking are a nuisance.

Mysadsadstory when my DD had a brain tumour it took me weeks to get a referral and the GP tried to put me on antidepressants. The referral letter said she had vague symptoms and an anxious mother. She had classic symptoms of raised intracranial pressure and they only actually took me seriously when she threw up all over the eye clinic. She almost died.

Too many stories of women not being believed.

It took 10 years, a near successful suicide attempt and a psychotic episode for friends, family and health professionals to believe me when I said my dh (now xh) isn't well. The assumption was that I was neurotic and anxious . He now has Bipolar diagnosis .

Sad stories of women dismissed and ignored. Thanks to everyone sharing their stories.

The issues are structural. The medical profession needs to stop viewing women as unreliable witnesses of their own existence.

In pregnancy and birth women are so often put at risk by health care professionals dismissing their concerns.

In my group of friends, four separate women had issues that escalated to the point of being life threatening due to health care professionals ignoring their description of what was happening to them.