Reddit reviews Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

I very recently read a book called Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick and the author's discussion on hysteria is fascinating. She talks about it throughout the entire book because so many modern illnesses/disorders that mainly or only affect women (like Fibromyalgia or PMDD) are very similar to what doctors used to call Hysteria. She basically said that most of the "contested illnesses" we have today stem directly from Hysteria- and that women's pain in general is very often described as psychosomatic (all in her head) whereas men's pain is typically seen as physiomatic (real, bodily pain). Highly recommend this book for anyone interested in how women are treated in medicine.

I love how quick you were to assume I had no evidence, without even doing the quickest of google searches. Shows your bias, but I'm always happy to dig up studies for people.

Here's a study from a brain tumor charity which reports that women are significantly more likely to face delays getting diagnosed with brain tumors. Here, I'll even quote it:

>Men were more likely than women:
>
>• to be diagnosed within a year of initial symptoms
>
>• to see 3 months or less pass between their first visit to a doctor and diagnosis
>
>• to have seen a doctor only once or twice prior to diagnosis.
>
>Women were more likely than men:
>
>• to see between 1 and 3 years and 5 or more years pass between first symptoms and diagnosis
>
>• to wait 10 or more months between their first visit to a doctor and diagnosis
>
>• to have made more than five visits to a doctor prior to diagnosis.

It also states that women were more likely to believe that the doctors didn't know what they were talking about. I suppose the waiting times and constant referrals will do that to you.

here's a study on the misdiagnosis of depression in female patients. It estimates that 30-50% of women diagnosed with depression are misdiagnosed, however it is worth mentioning that this study's a little old now, I'd be interested in seeing how things have improved in the past twenty-odd years.

Here's a study released saying that more than twice as many women had to make more than three visits to a to a GP before getting referred to a specialist for bladder and renal cancer. Here's a quote:

>Each year in the UK, approximately 700 women with either bladder or renal cancer experience a delayed diagnosis because of their gender, of whom more than a quarter (197, or 28%) present with haematuria.

Because you don't know how to google things, I'll tell you what haematuria is: blood in urine. A over a quarter of women facing delays for seeing renal cancer specialists were pissing blood.

Here's a big one which broadly concludes that women's diagnosis for rare diseases took about twice as long or more than men's diagnosis. For example, Crohn's disease: Men's average: 12 months. Women's: 20 months.

Here's a quote:

>It is speculated that the later diagnosis of CD in women might be due to the fact that many physicians are quick to attribute CD symptoms to common causes. For example, abdominal pains may be explained as gynaecological in origin and weight loss to dieting or even anorexia nervosa.

Regarding Cystic Fibrosis:

>A later diagnosis in women than in men is surprising since the life expectancy of women is shorter than that of men among patients with CF

I pulled most of this from an excerpt from this book. I'd suggest you read it, but I doubt you would. You're obviously not a curious person.

Doing Harm by Dusenbery is a book that catalogues these issues.

/u/Freckled_daywalker posted a link to a study above.