Daily Telegraph: Why do we tell women they're mad, when they're really ill? Nov 18 2019

or
"Stop telling women they're mad when they're really ill"


https://twitter.com/user/status/1196408597271470080


https://twitter.com/user/status/1196495735358939139

 

I read 'mad' more to mean imaginary or moral weakness. In which case I think the headline is correct.

Mad is slang and not a psychiatric category. That does open up a discussion though of what I consider an issue of how mental health labels are created--how accurate/meaningful they are.

It seems to me in the past that psychiatry simply thought of mental health illnesses as functions of a weak mind. And that seems to be ongoing despite there now being a general understanding of MH's connection to physical abnormalities.

 

Yes, in a story about equality they degenerate anyone with mental illness....


Edited for typo

 

would 'mad' meaning slightly irked, imperceptibly aggrieved, or a tad put out, make more sense

 

I wonder why so many people think that psychiatric diagnosis implies illness that isn't real.

Could it have something to do with many patients having their reality denied and being given a psychiatric diagnosis that doesn't even fit their symptoms and situations?

Or maybe with overuse of ideas and labels like hypochondria, catastrophizing, somatization?

 

I understand the point of what SW is saying. But in reality most people who read a headline like that will understand perfectly what the headline writer was getting at. So SW's complaint is a bit over the top as far as I'm concerned.

The things that doctors say to women don't just encompass whether or not they have psychiatric problems. They also make snide remarks about morals, honesty, personality, character, and the way they dress. The implication that the patient lies constantly and knowingly is common.

 

It is a poor choice of headline, largely because it distracts from the content of the article. It is about medicine's dismissive attitude to illnesses predominately affecting women, that women are seen as unreliable witnesses to their own health, and their symptoms are more likely to be dismissed as hypochondria, anxiety, stress, somatisation.

I wonder if SW's has read the article. His comment "of course get the diagnosis right" is odd when the article is saying that doctors are less likely to do thorough investigate or prescribe medication when the patient is female. Presumably he would agree it's difficult to get the "right diagnosis" without listening to the patient or doing investigation.

 

I think SW has taken quite the offense because he knows exactly that this charaterisation of people especially women is rife within parts of medicine and psychiatry. Although psychiatry will couch their language in rather softer tones and even believe (it's often all about their beliefs) they are being helpful by calling what might amount to a character judgment as somatoform or any of the other labels. Inevitably they usually come off as patronising at the least.

And again, if SW really wanted to make the biggest contribution to MH IMO it would be to grapple with discerning the difference between being tired or down in the dumps and something more profoundly wrong requiring medical attention other than CBT etc. His empire building is harming to everyone.

 

But the underlying problem isn't of mental illness but of fobbing off sick people as not being a medical problem, with the assumption of some form of madness or hysteria. The end result remains the same: no medical care, no support, no accommodations, no disability and he is responsible for a lot of this disaster. If he doesn't understand that this is what happens in practice it makes no difference, this is exactly the thing ME advocates have been trying to get through his thick skull.

Wessely may make the occasional point in that direction but his own work is massively misused to do just that so he really should shut up over this, making the occasional comment doesn't negate the outcomes he created for us and many others. Saying it isn't any less real doesn't mean anything after having spent a whole career promoting doing just that. Especially galling with this "get the diagnosis right" bit.

 

A doctor wrote in my medical records that I talk too much!

 

A doctor wrote in my notes that I was odd and looked very old-fashioned in the way I dressed. I admit I was never much in to fashion. I probably still look old-fashioned even now. I hate clothes shopping and still wear some clothes I've had for many years because they don't have holes in yet. (Holes are the signal that it is time for the item to go to the dump or to be recycled.)

 

I wouldn't go that far.

Inconvenient holes are a sign that things may need to be retired in a year or two

 

I went and read the replies SW got to his tweets and came across this link which I thought fit rather well in to this discussion :

https://holeousia.com/2018/11/05/pattern-language-the-professionals/

I think this blog is by a member here, but I can't remember his name.

 

I've just discovered that the article referred to in the first post can be read online :

https://digitaledition.telegraph.co...~hzWGDjSeg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLCEPDGCTPVKXNOA

Given the very long web link I suspect someone who has a subscription to the telegraph has left themselves open to having their subscription cancelled.

 

There really is a shocking number of physicians out there who put their personal opinion far above the lives of millions. That's definitely not optimal. No wonder so little progress is being made when decades are wasted on insisting that it's the patients who are wrong.

 

Timely link I found on the CFS sub-reddit: https://people.com/health/extreme-d...on-bream-suicidal-i-was-in-pain-all-the-time/.

Eye pain of a kind intense enough some patients suicide. Told she was hysterical. Found a diagnosis herself through forum. Treatment worked, not perfectly, but enough to regain a normal life. Hysterical eye pain solved, I guess?

Wessely's comments are seriously grotesque. He is basically advocating that it is the misdiagnosis that is correct and patients should comply, are wrong to complain and it's just a problem of perception, of disliking the label. Just like us. His thoughts and feelings matter more than literally millions of lives, no matter what. This has to change completely, it's broken beyond repair.

 

There are shockingly discriminatory headlines in mainstream media almost every day, but of course this is the one he singles out. And he is shocked at the headline, rather than the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of women!?!

 

What about this headline from the organisation that he was president of!

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/defa...2012-doctors-go-mad-too.pdf?sfvrsn=bedd75ee_2