Informed Decisions and Women’s Health November 12, 2010
Posted by alana in Depression, Education, Health Care, Mental Illness, Women.1 comment so far
A functioning democracy relies on an educated and informed public who will make reasonable decisions. Not many people would argue with this statement, but at the same time there is widespread belief that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves so we’d really better let the experts handle things. This is true of politics and economics, which most people have been convinced they know too little about to have an opinion on (even though I would argue that the majority of people have a far better sense of what justice is, and the difference between right and wrong, than anyone in the Justice Department). One field that is generally thought to be the exclusive terrain of experts and never meant to be democratic is medicine – it goes without saying that a doctor who has had years of training will know best what is good for our bodies. Ironically, nobody can actually know what is happening with our bodies better than we can ourselves. I’m not arguing that personal self-knowledge about one’s own body and extensive medical knowledge are congruent – just that more knowledge is better, and an educated patient will be better able to convey what is wrong with them and to participate in a discussion about possible treatments. In mental health care, it almost seems like people believe the opposite principle – that psychiatry is like a magic trick, and if you know too much about the inner workings, then the magic won’t work for you. So, when it comes to our health care – and especially our mental health care – we are expected to be passive recipients of treatment rather than active participants. This is a problem because I believe that a contributing factor to most people’s depression is that they have no control over their own lives – they feel uninformed and helpless to change most things, from political and economic concerns to their jobs and family, to their own physical and mental health. Education is a process of learning that there are geniuses and experts who know what’s right, and if you just do what you’re told then you’ll be alright. Because none of us can know everything about everything, it is necessary to outsource most knowledge to professionals who concentrate on one particular specialization. But this obscures the fact that we can all know enough about most subjects to be able to make informed decisions, and that when we know about more than just one specialized field we are better able to make connections and have a holistic view of how seemingly disparate parts are actually interconnected (like the mind and the physical body, or politics and economics).
The idea of informed decision-making is especially relevant to women’s health, because culturally we are expected to simply endure particular symptoms as a matter of course because they are part of what it means to be a woman. A certain amount of misery just goes with the territory. Even doctors will tell us that a degree of pain, both physical and emotional, is normal and expected. Rather than having a scientific explanation for premenstrual or menopausal symptoms that would allow us to move away from a fatalistic view of suffering, we curse our ill fortune at having been born female. (more…)
