السبت، 8 مايو 2021

The chemical question: does focusing on hormones undermine mental healthcare?

According to some, not factoring hormone fluctuation into women’s mental healthcare can be dangerous. For others, it feeds into outdated stereotypes

“It’s my hormones, doc. It’s my hormones, and no one’s listened to that.”

It was the late 1980s, in what was once Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital in inner-city Melbourne. A brash young registrar doing her training in psychiatry had arrived at her first hospital placement, full of ideas and enthusiasm. Perhaps to put a bit of scuff on that bright ambition, she was assigned to look after the female patients in the “back ward”.

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What keeps me up are the mothers [who] end their lives because they have such horrendous symptoms

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The pharmaceutical industry has a huge interest in this being a medical illness that they can sell us an expensive drug to fix

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Embrace the bio-psychosocial approach, because that then means you will look at everything

Bianca Nogrady is a freelance science journalist, author and broadcaster. This is an edited extract from Griffith Review – States of Mind, out now

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2R8dJcB

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