Hammer and Nail Medicine: The Pervasive Ignorance of Endometrial Pain in Adolescents by the Mental Healthcare Profession

Abstract

Mental/behavioral healthcare continues to supply a covert nourishment of the suffering in adolescents and women afflicted with endometriosis. In adolescents, the situational powerlessness is primary. In normalizing the pathology of painful endometriosis, when the isolation affects the adolescent without interfering in the family’s functioning on a day-to-day basis, it often results in gynecological care not being sought. Instead, when dysregulated emotions from the many compounding factors in undiagnosed endometriosis lead to mood lability, this often causes familial dysfunction severe enough to warrant mental healthcare. Problematic is the absence of a psychotherapist’s ability to identify underlying causes of dysregulation and dysfunctional emotional health, especially when due to endometriosis or other reproductive system disease; this is a direct function of both insufficient training and a connective tissue disorder between the professional counselor and the multitude of physicians required for holistic care in the female adolescent with pain and depression. As such, delayed diagnosis and misdiagnosis become side effects of the routine invalidation of the patient’s experience, regrettably leading to (often lifelong) a habituated, recurrent dependency on the behavioral healthcare system. We look at the collective causes, environmental supporting mechanisms, and the costs of incorrect and untimely diagnosis in and perpetuated by mental and behavioral healthcare. Most importantly, to the extent that mental/behavioral healthcare is involved, we outline solutions to prevent further suffering due to undiagnosed endometriosis.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein