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The question is though, why does he say this?Okay @TiredSam okay @Jenny TipsforME. I get it now. I recently saw a video where a male doctor with an Australian accent said that it was obvious ME is not a "real" illness because it affects middle-aged women who are unhappily married. I have no idea if this counts as evidence but I thought I would mention it just in case. Although I expect you are already familiar with it.
Do you have evidence? This thread is about evidence.. I don't think it's a major cause.
The question is though, why does he say this?
Psychologists have dissmissed this as a psychological disease. This doc believes them. In his head he rationalises it as of course its middle age women with nothing to do in there lives.
Now imagine this disease affected both genders equally. Do you not think that same doctor will still belive the psychs, and this time rationalise it as of course you are complaining of these problems, you have no goals in life, you are work shy, you just need to find a partner and settle down or other such shit.
The problem seems to stem from the psychologists. Sexism is a symptom of the phycs trying to explain it away as mental. I don't think it's a major cause.
Sorry, I typed message before reading your post. I have no evidence.Do you have evidence? This thread is about evidence.
Tourettes is seen as clearly having a biomedical cause, even though there does not seem to be stronger evidence for this than for ME.This is interesting. But is it actually because there are psychological associations with Tourette's anyway, they already see it as in the bigger psychology camp?
are there conditions which cause similar level of disability to MUS conditions but are mainly male? How does their research funding compare?
A recent example comes from Susie Kilshaw’s work on Gulf War syndrome, which calls for more attention to “sufferers’ own accounts” (2008:220). Her work traces how psychiatry’s suggestion that the syndrome is stress related and thus psychiatric was “fiercely disputed by [UK] veterans” (2008:226) who maintained that their psychological problems were chemically induced. Kilshaw believes that the UK media, which explored the potential of diverse toxic agents, were instrumental in moving the public to support the veterans’ definition of Gulf War syndrome
(This is for the Le Roy case.) Sure, amongst other things.So is it saying that although environmental causes are as good a theory as conversion disorder, doctors jumped to the conclusion it was conversion because they were girls?
The neurologists voiced a Freudian understanding of hysteria, even if they called the condition by its modern name. First, their diagnosis of conversion disorder relied on the idea, popularized by late-19th-century case studies, that adolescent girls are particularly susceptible to the illness. In several public interviews, DENT neurologists argued that mass psychogenic disorder is the only diagnosis that can explain why the illness predominantly affected female teenagers.
......
Consider how Mechtler answers a question about adolescent girls in a media interview:
Interviewer: Are adolescent girls somehow more susceptible to this sort of thing?
Dr. Mechtler: They are and—and I’m not sure if we know why. Hippocrates is the father of medicine—used the term hysteria initially. And hysteria or hystera is the uterus. ...
So whatever reason, our forefathers in medicine realized young women—adolescent women—are far more
prone to have this. Doesn’t mean boys can’t have it. One could get into the psychosocial reasons why that oc-
curs, but that’s a discussion that’s too lengthy.
Alluding to the “enviable unity” of high school cheerleaders, Dominus implies that extremes of nonconscious mimicry are gendered female. The editorial staff of the Week embraces this same association:“There’s. . .a theory that cohesive groups, particularly those that wear matching uniforms and excel at synchronized movements, might be more susceptible to mass suggestion” (Week Staff 2012).
... Some journalists and bloggers began to refer to the Le Roy case as “cheerleader hysteria”
(e.g., Bell 2012), even though only a few of the students were cheerleaders.
Then community leaders embraced one of the more implausible explanations, mass psychogenic illness, even when the report noted that the afflicted did not socialize together. The diagnosis ultimately won the public’s approval and outscienced its competitors, in part because neurology appears to have deep cultural and scientific capital
Why do young women seem to be most susceptible? In a 2008 article for this paper, John Waller, associate professor of the history of medicine at Michigan State University and author of A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518, wrote: "Most experts now think that… girls and women are more likely to succumb due to the frustrations of living in families and societies dominated by men. Others argue that hysteria offers distressed women a legitimate reason to 'check out' from the indignities of daily life." Certainly, the Le Roy girls seemed driven by a quest for perfection.
"When the girls were interviewed on television they'd say things like, 'I had a perfect life, nothing was wrong with me'," says Abbott. "They wanted to be strong and not be the girl with the problems." Yet that desire may have also fueled their symptoms – a piece in the New York Times by Susan Dominus suggested that many of the girls were extremely stressed prior to falling ill.
GWS can be interpreted as the embodiment of failure to reach the masculine ideals espoused in the military and wider society.
@A.B. it is evidence of how it is perceived. Does that make sense? I'm not saying this perception is accurate but it exists in our culture. It seemed too relevant to what @RogerBlack was asking about not to include when I saw it.
We have brought this up. A gender bias issue does not make female doctors immune.
Good question. I'll look up the credibility of this academic.Is that really how gulf war illness is perceived, or is that a lunatic fringe view?
Vieda Skultans is someone I knew briefly. She helped me with my dissertation project when I was at uni. She's an appropriate person to give an opinion on this topic.“This is an important anthropological study, which I believe is set to become a classic. The theoretical perspectives are clearly presented and applied to compelling ethnographic material. The publication of this manuscript will make it accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students of anthropology, as well as students of political science, sociology and military studies.” · Vieda Skultans
“Medical dialogues are rarely solely about medical matters but serve as a proxy for feelings about the self and the way that an individual relates to others. Indeed, the inclusion of transcripts of interviews and discussions is of particular value…a brave book that challenges popular assumptions about Gulf War syndrome; her analysis of the long-term effects of military service will serve as an important record not only for those with an interest in the armed forces, but also for researchers in the field of illness perception.” · The British Journal of Psychiatry
Gend Med. 2010 Feb;7(1):19-27. doi: 10.1016/j.genm.2010.01.003.
Gender bias in diagnosing fibromyalgia.
Katz JD1, Mamyrova G, Guzhva O, Furmark L.
Author information
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Both patient- and physician-centered characteristics may influence disease classification c fibromyalgia (FM).
OBJECTIVE:
This study assessed the diagnostic criteria for FM and how rheumatologists use these criter in clinical practice.
METHODS:
Practicing rheumatologists were surveyed. Participants were asked to read a brief case description of a patient with FM and then to select those criteria most important to them for confirming tt diagnosis. Case studies of either male or female patients were randomly assigned. Data were analyzed using a random forests classification analysis to abstract the strongest variables for distinguishing disease classification--in this assessment, stratified by gender of the case study.
RESULTS:
A total of 61 surveys were analyzed. Four rheumatologists (6.6%) chose the 2 (and only the 2 criteria for FM classification (tender points and widespread pain) proposed by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The candidate diagnostic criteria discriminating between rheumatologists (when stratified by gender of the case study) consisted of (1) tender points, (2) normal erythrocyte sedimentatio rate, (3) normal thyroid tests, (4) fatigue, and (5) poor quality of sleep. Of these, the criterion of tender points was chosen by rheumatologists statistically more frequently for male patients (P = 0.047).
CONCLUSIONS:
This study provides insight into the diagnostic thought processes of rheumatologists. minority of practitioners relied solely on the published ACR classification criteria for the diagnosis of FM. We also report gender bias with regard to disease classification, because rheumatologists were more likely to require a physical finding to support a diagnostic conclusion in male patients.
Here is more from the presenter et al:
https://www.intechopen.com/books/a-...chosomatics-the-new-neuroconnective-phenotype
Chapter 8
Joint Hypermobility, Anxiety, and Psychosomatics — The New Neuroconnective Phenotype
By Guillem Pailhez, Juan Castaño, Silvia Rosado, Maria Del Mar Ballester, Cristina Vendrell, Núria Mallorquí-Bagué, Carolina Baeza- Velasco and Antonio Bulbena
DOI: 10.5772/60607
... Somatic illnesses include irritable bowel, dysfunctional esophagus, multiple chemical sensitivity, dizziness or unsteadiness (central vestibular pattern), chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, glossodynia, vulvodynia, hypothyroidism, asthma, migraine, temporomandibular dysfunction, and intolerances or food and drug hypersensitivity. It is envisaged that new descriptions of anxiety disorders and also of some psychosomatic conditions will emerge and different nosological approaches will be required.
Keywords: Anxiety disorders, joint hypermobility, hyperlaxity, psychosomatic medicine, phobic disorders
Full chapter is Open Access and there is also aPDF.