Talk:Sex and illness

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it is a rather well known fact - the reference:

http://www2.health-center.com/mentalhealth/personality/borderline.htm

It is a disputed fact. Read the text of Histrionic personality disorder (from the US National Library of Medicine), or do a little research on the social causes of medical diagnosis. Wikipedia does not exist in order to provide free web hosting for weirdo distortions of reality. Tannin

I looked at the linked source and didn't se any statistics at all on sex-specificity. I also agree with Tannin that a web-page is not an authoritative "reference." But I want to add another observation: the article mixes up two different kinds of so-called sex-specific illnesses. It seems pretty obvious that only males will get testicular cancer, and only females will get cervical cancer. This is VERY different from illnesses like heart attacks, suicide, or BPD. In these cases, epidemiologists at best provide probabilities and tendencies. But even if 90% of all BPD patients were female and 10% were male (and we are assuming too that males and females seek treatment and are diagnosed equally, which is far from certain), one can hardly call BPD a "sex-specific illness." Slrubenstein

the bpd is qoted as 3 times more frequent - there is paragraph in the middle. frequency of histrionics is disputed by some, but there are more diagnosed females. the frequencies for eating disorder are also supported on that web page.

Sorry I missed that. In any event, it is still by no means "sex-specific." To list it as such in this article, especially without going into the methodological issues, would be misleading. If you are especially interested in (and knowledgeable about) the issues concerning sex and the prevelance of various disorders (BPD, Bulemia) I wouldn't want to discourage you from contributing to an article. BUT it should not be called "sex-specific illnesses," it should be something like The relationship between one's sex and illness -- and it really would have to go into greater detail about likely sociological/cultural causes, as well as methodological issue like bias in reporting and diagnosis. Slrubenstein

i agree article could have a better title. it discusses illnesses which are not exclusively specific to a sex, but which occur with different frequencies -abcdef

this is link to gender specific medicine. the term seems not to be exclusive.

http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/partnership/publications.html

abcdef - I fixed the title. I created the link carelessly - not properly considering the exact meaning of the phrase. Martin

[edit] Article title

Surely it would be clearer if this page were called "Gender and illness", since it's nothing to do with sex? ··gracefool |☺ 04:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That would be exactly backwards! "Sex" is biological, "Gender" is sociological. Medical statistics are compiled with regard to sex, not gender. "Sex" is a euphemism for "sexual intercourse", not a synonym. Which is not to say the article couldn't be better titled or better written... - Nunh-huh 05:00, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Endometriosis

Endometriosis has, very rarely, been found in men undergoing estrogen treatment for prostate cancer. Although this is rare, it is significant for understanding endometriosis as a disease. It casts severe doubt on the main suggested cause of endometriosis, retrograde menstruation. I will amend the page (which currently says it only occurs in women) to this effect.