"Medicating Women's Feelings"

[Asa]

Psychiatrist Julie Holland / "Medicating Women's Feelings" / NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/medicating-womens-feelings.html?_r=1

Women’s emotionality is a sign of health, not disease; it is a source of power. But we [women] are under constant pressure to restrain our emotional lives. We have been taught to apologize for our tears, to suppress our anger and to fear being called hysterical.

The pharmaceutical industry plays on that fear, targeting women in a barrage of advertising on daytime talk shows and in magazines. More Americans are on psychiatric medications than ever before, and in my experience they are staying on them far longer than was ever intended...

As a psychiatrist practicing for 20 years, I must tell you, this is insane.

At least one in four women in America now takes a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. Women are nearly twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder than men are...The increase in prescriptions for psychiatric medications, often by doctors in other specialties, is creating a new normal, encouraging more women to seek chemical assistance...

Obviously, there are situations where psychiatric medications are called for. The problem is too many genuinely ill people remain untreated, mostly because of socioeconomic factors. People who don’t really need these drugs are trying to medicate a normal reaction to an unnatural set of stressors...

Medical chart reviews consistently show that doctors are more likely to give women psychiatric medications than men, especially women between the ages of 35 and 64. For some women in that age group the symptoms of perimenopause can sound a lot like depression, and tears are common...

We need to stop labeling our sadness and anxiety as uncomfortable symptoms, and to appreciate them as a healthy, adaptive part of our biology.

 

[Gijs]

How do you measure the feelings of women in an objective way? Labeling unexplained symptoms as depression or anxiety is the keyproblem in psychiatry. Psychiatry is a very tale. They want to blame the patiënts for their intellectuel-short-sightedness.

 

[msf]

So it´s natural for women to be depressed? So it wasn´t my fault? Phew....

Haha, this is one of those issues where you can be accused of sexism whichever side you take.

 

[whodathunkit]

Yeah, I don't think saying that "Women are nearly twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of depression" can be called evidence of anything unless you can prove that men and women are seeking psychiatric help for the same symptoms at the same rate and then women are still more likely to receive the diagnosis of depression.

If I was to bet on it, I would bet the "2x more likely" stat is more an indication that women are 2x more likely to seek help or identify certain feelings as indications of depression in the first place.

That said, I do think there is a hyper-readiness on the part of the medical professions to throw medications at us, mostly inappropriately when it comes to mood- and behavior-altering drugs. Women are probably bearing the brunt of this because we're more likely to go to the doctor. And we hates nasssty peri-menopause symptoms, Precious!

School-aged boys are probably being medicated at an inappropriate rate, too. What seems to be normal behavior for boys is typically considered to be disruptive, unwanted behavior in a modern indoor classroom.

But from what I remember it's just as normal for little boys to be fidgety and a bit obnoxious as it is for middle-aged women to be moody and sometimes weep. Part of life.

 

[msf]

Hmm, interesting point - I have even less experience in this area than first area, but the difference between my mother´s take on doctors and my father´s was amazing - my mother thinks that they can do no wrong, and my father was the opposite. Of course, this might be because my father had ME and my mother didn´t. It´s surprising how different the attitudes of two well-educated middle class people can be, though.

 

[whodathunkit]

@msf, you're probably responding to my edited comments about women, authority figures, and compliance. On second thought I deleted that bit because bringing compliance with meds into the discussion was probably OT, even if tangentially related.

FWIW, my mother's take on doctors and my father's are exactly the same as your parents. Although I should say "was" since Dad's gone.

 

[msf]

Haha, now you´ve made it look like I´m crazy...

 

[whodathunkit]

But aren't you, Precious, hmmm? Aren't we all?