Women 74% More Likely Misdiagnosed Psychosomatically — SkimNews
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- University of Cambridge and University of East Anglia researchers, in a Lancet eClinicalMedicine study of over 6,600 autoimmune patients, found women were 74% more likely to have symptoms misdiagnosed as psychosomatic and 46% more likely to receive a psychiatric misdiagnosis after controlling for age, disease type, continent, and household finances.
- The study found 43% of women reported being told their condition was psychiatric versus 33% of men, and 34% of women said symptoms were misdiagnosed as psychosomatic compared with 22% of men.
- Patients faced sharply different diagnostic timelines: the most common time to diagnosis for women was 1 to 2 years, versus less than 3 months for men, with women also reporting more healthcare consultations along the way.
- Melanie Sloan, lead researcher at Cambridge/UEA, warned that "psychological or mental health explanations can be given too soon" and urged doctors to say "I believe you" to patients whose symptoms they cannot see.
- Co-author Shaista Tayabali, who has an autoimmune condition herself, said historical gender biases persist in the diagnostic journey and that women still struggle to have their symptoms believed accurately despite the abandonment of labels like hysteria.
Why it matters: Autoimmune conditions affect roughly 1 in 10 people globally, and this 6,600-patient study quantifies a concrete cost of gendered diagnostic bias: women waited a median of 1–2 years for diagnosis versus under 3 months for men. The researchers frame that gap as a legacy of historical medical biases that discount women's symptom reports, delaying treatment for conditions ranging from lupus to Hashimoto's disease.
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