When I was 11 I sprained my ankle being thrown from a horse. It didn’t heal, and continued to hurt, sending paralysing pains shooting up my leg. I was told it was psychosomatic, that the pain was all in my head. How could a sprained ankle be psychosomatic? The doctor took one look at me, saw that my parents were in the middle of a brutal divorce, and saw only a troubled young girl. And everyone knows troubled girls aren’t really sick, except in the head.
I make no secret that I’ve battled severe mental illness during my life. I’ve racked up as many psychiatric diagnoses as physical ones, but over the years I’ve educated myself (completing a postgraduate degree on the relationship between gender and mental illness) and have learned more about the link between body and mind, the impact trauma has on the body, and the history of medical misogyny.
Along the way I’ve been introduced to and inspired by the works of other women such as Dr Jessica Taylor (who advocates for trauma-informed care), Dr Alyson J McGregor (whose book Sex Matters explores how a medical system that takes the cis male body as standard harms women and trans people), and Anushay Hossain (whose book The Pain Gap explores the intersection of medical misogyny and racism).
For something so universal, pain is also singular: each person’s experience of it is unique, so how can we objectively quantify pain? How do we know that what we might consider a two on the pain scale, isn’t someone else’s 10? There’s a long, long history of female pain being marginalised, ignored, or dismissed as the normal state of existing in a woman’s body. This gender pain gap was highlighted in a recent report by Nurofen, which found that more than one in two women feel as if they have had their pain ignored or dismissed because of their gender. In 2009, a senior midwife sparked headlines by announcing it was “good for women” to suffer pain in childbirth; this year, the Guardian ran articles on the routine denial of gas and air during labour after nitrous oxide was found to pose health risks to midwives. A report from 2021 points out the disparity in infant mortality rates among ethnic groups. We appear to be going backwards.
However badly I’ve been treated as a woman, I benefit from being mainly white and certainly looking white. A Guardian headline that reads, “Black patients half as likely to receive pain medication as white patients”, is backed up by one in a long line of studies showing that race has a huge impact on how doctors perceive patient pain, with black women being more likely to be perceived as drug seekers, or aggressive, and black people, even black children, being less likely to receive painkillers, even for broken bones.
I can advocate for myself now: doctors see my qualifications, hear the casual way I use medical terminology, and accord me a respect and most importantly a level of trust that I desperately needed as a very unwell and homeless teenager.
On the flipside, I often feel like I’m telling the doctors what I think is wrong with me, but what if I’m wrong? We are all experts on our own bodies, but according to the NHS “many adults in the UK have low health literacy”. “Doctor Google” can be both empowering in terms of connecting people with support groups and giving them access to information, but it can also mislead and terrify. Women who lack educational privilege and have low health literacy are the ones who most need to be listened to and have their concerns taken seriously by medical professionals, yet they are the most likely to be ignored, undermined and, frankly, fobbed off. All women should receive the same level of respect that I (at least sometimes) now receive.
In May 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I suffered a relatively minor stroke. This (possibly combined with the stress of lockdown) incited an extremely frightening episode of psychosis. This time, privileged and protected by my education and my qualifications, I was properly treated. Referred to both a neurologist and a psychiatrist, working in harmony to treat both body and soul, brain and mind. This treatment should be the norm.
If you want to learn more about the Gender Pain Gap and read the full Gender Pain Gap Index Report commissioned by Nurofen, visit nurofen.co.uk/see-my-pain
Nurofen 200mg Tablet for short-term, mild to moderate pain. Contains ibuprofen. Always read the label. RKT-M-27950.
