NEWS
Column: "At last, society has begun to listen!"
New guidelines from the National Board of Health and Welfare require primary care to become better at handling menopausal symptoms. It’s not a day too soon, says Nina Campioni, journalist and host of the podcast Klimaktet.
A woman walks into a clinic. She has vague symptoms. She feels exhausted, mentally foggy, unable to handle stress, forgetful, and sleeps poorly. She also has lower back pain and frequent headaches, especially when stress levels are high. Sometimes she sees no point in getting out of bed. Above all, she doesn’t feel like herself.
The well-educated, stressed doctor listens and takes notes, listens to her heart and lungs, asks about her working conditions. Maybe you’re working too much? Are you depressed? Have you used antidepressants before? Perhaps we should try that?
The woman then leaves the clinic with a prescription for depression and a note recommending part-time sick leave due to burnout. Maybe that will solve it.
This story is fiction, but it could just as easily be taken straight from reality. I’ve lost count of how many people have written to me describing exactly this experience — how they turned to healthcare and left without the right help, but with pills that are supposed to help.
We women have begun to speak openly about our menopausal symptoms, stopped feeling ashamed, and are standing up for our bodies.
Nina Campioni
journalist and co-host of the podcast Klimaktet
“I was advised to go home and google it”
According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, seven out of ten women between the ages of 45 and 60 experience some form of menopausal symptoms that negatively affect daily life and quality of life. One in three women has symptoms so severe that they seek medical care. The statistics don’t say how many of them receive adequate help from healthcare. But it is still striking how many get the exact opposite.
I myself am one of those who, after menopause was confirmed, was advised to go home and google which treatment would be preferable. My educated gynecologist simply did not have enough knowledge to give me a clear picture of the available treatments and how we could begin to figure out what would suit me. No one will be surprised when I say that I never went back to that gynecologist.
Vague symptoms
It is remarkable how medical and nursing education can have missed such a large group within healthcare. You know—about half the population? Yes, exactly — women.
The fact that menopause will come is no shock to anyone. But when the symptoms creep in, they are often subtle and vague. Hard to grasp. I asked my primary care doctor how it could be that knowledge about menopause was so poor. “Yes, it’s strange,” was the disengaged response. From my female doctor. Strange was the word.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the medical profession could spend five minutes learning to recognize that the cluster of symptoms experienced by my fictional woman might be signs of perimenopause the stage before menopause. Just think how much money, time, and ill health we could save.
It’s really not rocket science — I, with no medical training but having gone through both perimenopause and menopause, would have dared to make the right diagnosis after a few minutes’ conversation with the woman in the opening story. Just saying.
We demand change
That the National Board of Health and Welfare has now established that competence development in primary care in this area should be prioritized is not a day too soon. But I believe it is thanks to us women finally beginning to speak openly about our menopausal symptoms. That we have stopped being ashamed and are standing up for our bodies. That we are calmly and confidently demanding change.
At last, society has begun to listen.
Now we just have to see whether we will continue to be heard.
Nina Campioni (english translation by Forte)
