âMaybe this is all in your headâ: When doctors donât believe women
Jennifer Brea
Not too long ago  if  Jennifer Brea  had gone to a doctor with the debilitating symptoms that left  her  bedridden   she  would have been diagnosed with "hysteria" â a catch-all for pretty much any unexplainable symptom experienced by a woman and attributed to things like an uncooperative uterus  or sexual repression  or sexual promiscuity . . . or just womenâs "frailty."
Today   Jennifer  is diagnosed with a condition generically described as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME for short). There is no test and there is no cure. In fact  it wasnât until a decade ago that medical professionals recognized it as a true condition  even though millions of people in the U.S. â mostly women â meet the criteria for it.
As  Jennifer  sought treatment for  her  symptoms  âthey would run a wide range of tests and do investigations. And then when they couldn't find anything  it always turned back to  âWell  maybe you're just really stressed. Maybe you are depressed. Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. Maybe this is all in your head.ââ
It took  Jennifer  over a year of seeing doctors and getting second  third and fourth opinions to even land on  her  diagnosis. Was this reluctance to diagnose  Jennifer  due to the lack of knowledge about this fairly prevalent disease? Or was there another unstated prejudice standing in the way of  Jennifer  getting treatment?
âI started to suspect as I was trying to get a diagnosis that I was being taken less seriously because I was young and female there was a strong expectation that because of my youth I was supposed to be well and nothing could be wrong â  Jennifer  told me in our interview for "Inflection Point ." âBut that also because of my youth and my gender that I was just more prone to be kind of anxious and worry about my body and what I was feeling. . . . And I think there's just this sort of unspoken expectation that women are more fragile and more achy  more whatever.â
Not too long ago  if   [TGT] had gone to a doctor with the debilitating symptoms that left   [TGT]   bedridden    [TGT]   would have been diagnosed with "hysteria" â a catch-all for pretty much any unexplainable symptom experienced by a woman and attributed to things like an uncooperative uterus  or sexual repression  or sexual promiscuity . . . or just womenâs "frailty."
Today   Jennifer  is diagnosed with a condition generically described as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME for short). There is no test and there is no cure. In fact  it wasnât until a decade ago that medical professionals recognized it as a true condition  even though millions of people in the U.S. â mostly women â meet the criteria for it.
As  Jennifer  sought treatment for  her  symptoms  âthey would run a wide range of tests and do investigations. And then when they couldn't find anything  it always turned back to  âWell  maybe you're just really stressed. Maybe you are depressed. Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. Maybe this is all in your head.ââ
It took  Jennifer  over a year of seeing doctors and getting second  third and fourth opinions to even land on  her  diagnosis. Was this reluctance to diagnose  Jennifer  due to the lack of knowledge about this fairly prevalent disease? Or was there another unstated prejudice standing in the way of  Jennifer  getting treatment?
âI started to suspect as I was trying to get a diagnosis that I was being taken less seriously because I was young and female there was a strong expectation that because of my youth I was supposed to be well and nothing could be wrong â  Jennifer  told me in our interview for "Inflection Point ." âBut that also because of my youth and my gender that I was just more prone to be kind of anxious and worry about my body and what I was feeling. . . . And I think there's just this sort of unspoken expectation that women are more fragile and more achy  more whatever.â