REALITY star Vicky Pattison says she was fobbed off for years by unsympathetic male doctors when she sought help for a premenstrual disorder.
The 37-year-old spoke out as a report by MPs found women’s health concerns were routinely dismissed due to “medical misogyny”.
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Vicky said she had to go private to get a diagnosis of a disorder linked to aches and cramps as well as mood swings, anxiety and depression.
The Geordie Shore star told ITV’s Good Morning Britain the condition made you feel “the world would be a better place without you in it”.
She added: “For five years I was dismissed. I was made to feel ashamed.
“For the majority of the time it was men.
“I think they lack an understanding and empathy towards what we’re going through as women.
“They are not given the correct, I think, information, education to be able to treat a woman going through what those women are.”
Pattison said she is in “a ridiculously privileged position”, with financial and family stability, but “there are thousands, if not millions, of people out there, women who aren’t getting the same opportunities I did and this report is a step in the right direction”.
GP surgeries have been singled out in the report, with the authors highlighting a “clear lack of awareness and understanding of women’s reproductive health conditions among primary healthcare practitioners”, particularly when those conditions occur in young women and girls.
Demi Santana Brown, from Love Is Blind UK season one, has endometriosis and she told BBC Breakfast it was “so frustrating” when she was told she had irritable bowel syndrome before receiving the right diagnosis.
When asked if the situation is improving, Brown added: “I still feel you have to advocate for yourself because I think from experiences other people have told me, they’re so quickly dismissed, so I don’t know if it is necessarily getting better.
“For me, once I got my diagnosis I kept pushing, but I was taken off the books, put back on the books.”
Giving advice to other women, she urged them to reach out to charities and find people who have been through a similar experience.
Endometriosis, which affects 1.5 million women in the UK, occurs when cells normally found in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body.
