Point to ponder.....

Saw this article a few weeks ago in a newspaper column and I think it is worth pondering on as the subject is not discussed as often as it should (in Asia especially, at least when I was living there) thus a lot of its symptoms can thereby be wrongfully diagnosed as a mental one resulting in having to unnecessarily rely on lifetime medication.

It goes as follows:-

Charles Dickens when attending the patient’s dance at St Luke’s Hospital for the insane on Boxing Day 1851, was struck by the preponderance of women inmates. "It is well known that female servants are more frequently affected than any other class of persons," he said.

We live in a more enlightening times and those forbidding mental institutions have disappeared but the sexual imbalance noted by Dickens persists. Women are more prone to suffer from, and be treated for, mental illness than men.

The stresses and strains of juggling the demands of work and family life is one plausible social explanation of why this may be so.But “hormones” may be a contributing factor, particularly for those prone to one of the trio of conditions relation to hormonal fluctuations; premenstrual tension, postnatal blues and menopausal melancholia.

So it would seem only sensible to consider some form of hormonal treatment for those with, say, severe depression or bipolar disorder who are also, or have been, troubled by such problems.But, claims Prof John Studd of London's Lister Hospital, this rarely happens. Instead, these women fall into the hands of psychiatrists who, due to adverse publicity around hormone replacement therapy, don’t believe in hormonal treatment. Prof Studd has encountered women who have been treated for years in the standard way – with antidepressants or Lithium or who may have undergone ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) or required admission to hospital. Many of these women, however “respond dramatically” to a combination of oestrogens and other drugs that restore the hormonal balance.

The above is taken out of the Second Opinion written by Dr James Le Fanu in the Sunday Telegraph.