Currently viewing the category: "Women’s health"

Motherhood is STILL Not a Medical Disorder: Response to Critics

By On July 15, 2009 · 48 Comments

After I wrote this post yesterday called “Motherhood is Not a Medical Disorder” about the Mother’s Act, which advocates for widespread screening of moms for post-partum depression (PPD), something I don’t think is a good idea because it medicalizes a normal stage of life, increases the chances that people will be but on antidepressant medications that they may not need and that may have side effects, and represents yet another intrusion into privacy, I got this response from John Grohol at psychcentral (“False Claims by Bremner”).

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Motherhood is Not a Medical Disorder

By On July 13, 2009 · 54 Comments

This recent article in Time Magazine discusses the Mother’s Act, legislation initiated in response to the story of Melanie Blocker-Stokes, who leaped to her death from her hotel room in Chicago three months after the birth of her daughter. Officially known as the Melanie Blocker-Stokes Post Partum Depression Research and Care Act, but referred to as the Mother’s Act, this legislation would require screening of all women post-partum for depression.

The problem with this is the attitude that being a mother is a risk factor for a psychiatric disorder.

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DSM Shadow Team: Female Sexual Dysfunction? (And Kupfer et al Strike Back)

By On June 30, 2009 · 12 Comments

One of the diagnoses on the table is Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), a “disease” that if accepted would surely drive the drug companies to “identify and treat” these poor lassies with drugs like the testosterone patch (see “Wow A Drug To Have Sex Once More a Month? Sign Me Up!”) or whatever psychotropic they could drug out of the medicine cabinet.

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Statins Interfere with Orgasms: Live Update from APS in Chicago

By On March 6, 2009 · 14 Comments

Mrs. Bremner and I are at the American Psychosomatic Society (APS) Annual Meeting in Chicago this week where the most interesting presentation other than our poster and talk on brain and heart mechanisms mediating the increased risk for mortality in people with heart disease and depression, is this late breaking data [...]

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Goodbye to You Too Yaz: That Birth Control Pill is Driving Me Bananas

By On February 11, 2009 · 11 Comments

Bayer announced today that it is going to spend $20 million for an advertising campaign to reverse the effects of its ad campaign promoting the oral birth control pill, Yaz, as effective for the ups and downs of daily life as well as zits and other skin blemishes. This ad campaign was launched [...]

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Wow! A Drug for Sex Once More a Month? Sign Me Up!

By On January 27, 2009 · 6 Comments

The results of the “A Phase III Research Study of Female Sexual Dysfunction in Women on Testosterone Patch without Estrogen (APHRODITE)” study published in the NEJM today showed that if post-menopausal women who have a loss of libido put a testosterone patch on their arms that they will have satisfying sex once a month more than they are currently having, although there may be a risk of breast cancer or cardiovascular disease

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