Nam Kiwanuka: In 1980, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back became a blockbuster movie and Pink Floyd's, Another Brick in the Wall dominated the music charts. I say this not to trivialize what I'm about to say next, but to highlight how recent this history is. 1980 was also the year that the American Psychiatric Association removed hysteria as a medical diagnosis from its diagnostic manual. 1980. A condition that had its roots in ancient Egyptian and Greek societies. In fact, the word hysteria comes from the ancient Greek word for uterus, hysteria. Hysteria was used to explain away women's ill health, whether it was physical or not, to minimize and dismiss it as a woman being too emotional, neurotic, and hysterical. Until the early 1900s, if a woman had symptoms like cramps, depression, or a headache, and had a uterus, a doctor would probably diagnose her with hysteria. Symptoms of this disorder could run the gamut from migraine to paralysis, numbness, fainting, sweats, difficulty in breathing, insomnia, and even nymphomania.

Nam Kiwanuka: Around 1880, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot changed how hysteria was viewed when he surmised that hysteria wasn't a gynecological disorder, but a neurological one. He thought it could be cured through hypnosis. He would later acknowledge that hysteria was a psychiatric disorder. While Charcot believed hysteria impacted both men and women, hysteria remained mostly a diagnosis for women. Women with hysteria were thought to be possessed by the devil rather than suffering from a physical malady. These women were thought to be "demonic, sinful, and contaminated". They were witches to be burned at the stake. Treatments for hysteria were violent and included bloodletting, induced vomiting, hysterectomy, leeching, and forced pelvic massage to induce orgasm. In the 1940s, most institutionalized patients were men. But by 1942, 75% of lobotomies were carried out on women. That was less than 100 years ago. And the legacy of hysteria is reflected today with the medical gaslighting and the gender bias that women experience when it comes to their health.

Nam Kiwanuka: When it comes to women, mental health has become a "scapegoat" diagnosis. Women with ADHD are more likely to be misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression or bipolar disorder. As well, studies show that instead of diagnosing women with endometriosis or an autoimmune disease like lupus, women are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. When women need care for things like endometriosis, they get a mental illness diagnosis. And when they need care from mental illness, it's misdiagnosed. It's a no-win situation.

Nam Kiwanuka: Women's health and mental health matters. While men are more likely to die by suicide, women are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and are about three times more likely to attempt suicide. According to CAMH, women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, have different symptoms from men, and their symptoms are more severe than men. When you consider that women weren't included in clinical trials until 1993 and that we are now only learning more about how hormones like estrogen impact our health and the menopause transition, how much do we really know about women's mental health and how to trust the system where the data and research has been built mostly around the male body? It's no wonder that women are misdiagnosed, mistreated, and misunderstood when it comes to their mental health.

Nam Kiwanuka: On today's episode, we speak to science writer and health researcher Misty Pratt about her book, All in Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women's Mental Health. Misty received five different diagnoses for her mental health over 15 years, and each diagnosis was from a different practitioner. We speak to her about why she argues that "All mental illnesses were first constructed as feminine disorders and why the mental health system is steeped in bias and how we can't talk about mental health without considering that 'mental health is whole body health.'" Misty Pratt joins me now. Misty Pratt, welcome to the podcast. Hi.

Misty Pratt: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Nam Kiwanuka: Thank you so much for joining me. Could you please introduce yourself to our listeners and what you do?

Misty Pratt: Absolutely. Yeah. So I work in healthcare communications for a health research institute in Toronto. Prior to that I was a health researcher myself as well and I am also a writer and an author and I like to write about women's health and mental health and all sorts of things. Well, in 2024, you released your book, All in Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women's Mental Health, and the first line of the first chapter in the book just takes your breath away. You write, "I was 5 years old the night my grandmother lost her mind." Why did you want to start with your grandmother's story?

Misty Pratt: I actually wanted to write a book about my grandmother. I wanted to tell her story about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her mid-50s, which at the time in the 80s was not a common thing. But when I started to try to do that, I realized the story was about so much more than her. It was about me and my own mental illness. And it was also about many other women and their experiences in the system. And so I wanted to start with her story to set the, you know, the groundwork of why I was, you know, tackling this topic. But I also wanted to go beyond that story as well.

Nam Kiwanuka: Your first experience with your mental health was as a teenager at age 17. But as you got older, how did your grandmother's experiences inform your understanding of women's mental health?

Misty Pratt: So, she had a really rough time in the system. She was put on a whole cocktail of medications, ones that these days we would never prescribe to somebody at the same time. So she had a lot of side effects. She had a lot of people not listening to her and not really understanding what was wrong with her. And so I think for me it just influenced what I saw her going through and then what I experienced which was better. But then I started to speak to other women and hear their stories and I saw so many similarities between my grandmother and then those stories that I was hearing that I realized the topic was a lot bigger than I initially thought.

Nam Kiwanuka: What were some of those similarities that you saw?

Misty Pratt: So, a lot of the time it's people are saying that they feel that they go into a doctor to get support and they're sometimes being brushed off. So, patted on the back and kind of saying, you know, you're just stressed out. You just have too much going on. You need to rest. So, not getting the care and support that they need for sometimes what could be a serious mental illness. And then other times it's I think a lot of the time it's misdiagnosis. So, you know, you go in, you have all these symptoms, some of them are mental, some of them are physical, and you end up with a diagnosis of a mental disorder and the other stuff doesn't get examined. And so there could be more going on because we know mental illness overlaps with many illnesses.

Nam Kiwanuka: And yet we don't tend to focus on that especially for women and that is due to a lot of historical bias that we see with women's health. We're going to talk a bit more about that. But you know this story is personal to you but you also spoke to you did a lot of research for this book. You spoke to many experts. You documented lived experiences from other women. Why did you want to write this book?

Misty Pratt: Personally for me, what I felt throughout my life was that something was wrong with me that I had some genetic condition or my brain chemistry was off.

Nam Kiwanuka: You actually say that you were broken. You felt broken.

Misty Pratt: Yes. I felt completely broken. And I looked at my grandmother and I thought this is my life now. And it was only when I started to explore the other side of mental illness that it's not just about our biology, it's also about our social world that I this light bulb moment happened where I went, wait a minute, like maybe it's not just all me, maybe it's not just my brain chemistry, you know, there's more going on. And so that message, I mean, it changed everything for me. And so I think that was the catalyst of wanting to share that message and and tell other women that maybe this is a comforting message to you to know that it's not just about what's going on in you, it's what's going on around you.

Nam Kiwanuka: How did it change things for you?

Misty Pratt: Everything. It changed everything. I think I had it had been, you know, decades of treatment in and out of treatment. I had seen I I would count probably 15 to 20 therapists over my life that I had seen trying to get better. I had tried medications and when I had this realization and then started to explore that a bit more. It didn't take anxiety away, it didn't take the depression away. Sure, they still came. But I had this newfound I don't know if it was a confidence or just a sense of like I'm going to be okay through this and I'm going to work on what I can because there's so many factors outside of my control that I do that I can't work on. So what am I going to do to just make myself feel better today? And

Misty Pratt: Over time I did start to feel better. Anxiety was, you know, less. But I would say I'm not it's there's no cure. It's not like, oh, for the rest of my life, I'm now going to be this very calm, zen person. I'm still me. But

Nam Kiwanuka: And you had five different diagnoses, right?

Misty Pratt: Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Nam Kiwanuka: That must have been very confusing, too, right?

Misty Pratt: So confusing. Yeah. There was times where I kind of left an office and went, "What? I have this now?" It just seemed strange to me that every time I saw a new provider, I would get a new perspective on my mental illness. and it made me realize it's very subjective.

Nam Kiwanuka: Let's get into your book's title, how has gender bias harmed women's mental health.

Misty Pratt: So, I think a lot of this is historical. So, if you can go back in time and see how women have been treated in the medical system in general, women were considered lesser than. So, the male body was kind of the standard of what we thought we should be working towards or achieving. And so women's health has mostly been ignored. Women were not included in clinical trials up until 1993. And even then now we still have this shortage of health research related to female specific conditions. So things that might affect somebody who's born as a female. I think too when we look at history and women's mental health, there's that, you know, picture of a woman just kind of like screaming into the void or she's just hysterical.

Nam Kiwanuka: You write that one of the reasons that the female body remains "shrouded in mystery" is because medical literature on female health and disease is either lacking or non-existent. Why is that?

Misty Pratt: So I think the the more specific answer is that the thalidomide tragedy which is this drug that was prescribed to women during pregnancy for morning sickness caused horrible deformities in babies and led to a lot of deaths. And so because of that people sort of freaked out. They went we don't want to include any women in trials for the little chance that they may be pregnant or getting pregnant. So that's one cause. I think the other sort of bigger cause if you take a look at history is that women have not been valued in our culture and in many cultures around the world. And so when you don't value somebody as a human being, you're not motivated to find out more about them or understand their bodies in a way that's less biased. It's interesting because I I'm sure someone listening to what you just said,

Nam Kiwanuka: I think there's a like defense mechanism to say, "Oh, we value women." But looking at the research that you've done, it's actually the opposite.

Misty Pratt: Yeah. A lot of people will say, "But we've come so far, like look at where we are now."

Nam Kiwanuka: Yes, that is true. A lot has changed. A lot has changed for, you know, wealthier white women for sure. But if we kind of look at a cross-section at intersectionality of of all different kinds of women, we can see things have not changed so much for everybody. And also if we look at the current political cultural climate that we're living in, I think there's this course correction happening where powerful people, I'm not going to say all men, but some men powerful men who don't really want to keep going on the the path that we're on. They want to reverse. They want to go back. So, yeah, there's there's a lot that still needs to be changed and I think there's a lot at risk of what we could lose.

Nam Kiwanuka: You note in your book that sex or gender, you can't study one without the other. What did you mean by that?

Misty Pratt: So, I mean, sex is our biology, right? So, it's we're born, we're assigned female at birth. Although a lot of scientists, biologists now are saying there's not a clear distinction between male and female as much as we once thought. But that's sort of defined now in the science. Whereas gender is this social variable. It's the it's gender roles but it's also so much more than that. It's expectations, gender expectations and socialization that we have. And so if you just study one, you're missing this whole other area that you you could be understanding better understanding people's lived experiences. And so you have to have both together because we just don't we're not going to get a clear picture if we just stick with one.

Nam Kiwanuka: Misty, could you give us an example of how this gender bias appears in a clinical environment?

Misty Pratt: So there was a study that was done that I shared in my book, a Spanish study with a large cohort of people. So men and women and what they looked at was if a man and a woman went into a doctor's office and described similar symptoms and the doctor had the same checklist of criteria of how to diagnose somebody in front of them. What was happening was that women were much more likely to leave that office with a diagnosis and with a prescription for medication than a man was. And so what we see is that there must be something in how doctors are viewing women and their symptoms that's causing them to feel like, you know, that's an illness, that's a problem. Whereas with men, they're seeing it and they're thinking it's okay, he probably just needs a break. Um, but it's also like it makes me think of those like TV shows from the 60s7s where a woman is, you know, on a tranquilizer taking a tranquilizer because in order for her to have a good time at home, um, here's a pill and that's going to solve the problem.

Nam Kiwanuka: Absolutely. I think it's kind of a okay, we need to do something for you because you've come in, you're complaining about this problem, you're feeling anxious. So, of course, doctors are going to, especially family doctors, right now with with everything, all the stress they're under, they're going to reach for what is accessible. And right now, that is prescription medications. It's much harder to get somebody into mental health treatment, such as therapy, than it is to be able to say, just try this drug, and this might help.

Nam Kiwanuka: But even even if you do get into therapy, the wait times for therapy are so long and also super expensive.

Misty Pratt: Yeah. So there's publicly funded, but the number of people accessing publicly funded therapy services are very very small and so most of us are trying to either pay out of pocket or we have health benefits through a job. So yes, it can be enormously expensive and you can't always find the right person on the first try. So sometimes you're jumping around using up your benefits very quickly and then you're left with nothing. In the book, an expert you speak to says this. Women are depressed and women are anxious and women have trauma. It's just a woman thing. And then people socialize as men aren't getting access to explore all of their emotions. And those emotions just come out as anger. And we don't diagnose men for being angry because there isn't a diagnosis for this. How does that then create an environment for gender bias in medicine?

Misty Pratt: Well, this means that women are in the medical system more frequently. They're going through the system and yet they're being viewed in a certain light. They're being viewed as weak or as anxious and as needing certain kinds of treatment. And so what that means is yes, we're we're in the system. We're we're getting help, but it may not be the help that is required. Whereas men we can see and you know this is a whole other side of things that I think somebody else could write a book about is that men are not getting into the system as frequently not being seen and not being supported with their mental health and so there's this kind of push pull of like yes we're we're getting help but a lot of people are reporting that it's not the help that they need that their mental illness continues to suffer or their mental health continues to suffer. So yeah, it's a it's a challenging situation to be in.

Nam Kiwanuka: You also write and this is pretty lengthy, but I want to read the whole thing for people to get an idea of what it is that you're trying to say. You write if our depression arises partially from experiences like sexual harassment and violence, traumas, the mental load from care, work, marginalization, devaluation, and poverty. It is a curious thing that our society focuses solely on the chem on a chemical fix for a problem not created by us but affecting us to remain dedicated mothers, engaged citizens or professional go-getters. We receive the message to just take her meds and get on with things. Can you expand your thought process around that?

Misty Pratt: Yeah. So, I interviewed somebody in the book, Julie Green, who's also a writer, and she had direct experience with this where she was, struggling as a mother with a young child with, autism, and she was also had been on and off medication for a number of years, had experienced really serious side effects that were making it difficult to go on to keep taking the medication to see the benefits. and she was told directly, you need to stay on this medication so that you can be a good mother to your child who is also struggling. And so it's this notion of like we're we're not strong enough perhaps to to keep going. We need to be sedated in some way. We need to be medicated. And that's not to say medication is bad. There absolutely are times where medication has been helpful for me and for many other people. But I think when it's this knee-jerk reaction of, oh, you should be medicated, you need you need to stay on those meds so that you are performing your role for society. That to me felt very problematic.

Nam Kiwanuka: And saying to a mother that if you want to be a good mother, as if we're not all trying to be good mothers.

Misty Pratt: Yeah, exactly.

Nam Kiwanuka: There's no manual, by the way.

Misty Pratt: Yep. Yep. Exactly. And what is a good mother, right? Is a good mother somebody who never loses their temper, who never feels anxious or sad. Is that a good mother or can I have my emotions and show them and my child can see those?

Nam Kiwanuka: I think one of the I don't want to say good things because um co uh was awful. A lot of people died and it's changed us in so many ways that maybe we we won't actually fully understand for decades to come. But one of the things that came out of it um that wasn't really happening before is that we started to talk about mental health and mental ill illness. Um so the messaging now that we are getting is that that's telling people like you know if you need help pick up the phone uh make an appointment and talk to a professional. There is no shame in that. But it seems as if there's still stigma attached to it. Like if you are a mother, if you say that I am struggling, it almost kind of makes you feel as if you're again what you said before, you're broken and maybe you're a danger to your family, to yourself. Um, so why does it still seem like there's so much stigma attached to women's mental health?

Misty Pratt: I think that we are better now at being able to say, I'm struggling. I need help. And even I know amongst my friends we talk about mental illness and our mental health very openly now. However, I would say when it comes to the I don't want to call it the dark side but the the more difficult struggles of mental illness, psychosis, you know breaking down to the point of no longer being able to work potentially losing a home. like all of those things, we continue to not feel comfortable talking about those or recognizing that those are a risk and may happen. And so I think you get this whole population of people that still think, okay, if I if I, you know, talk about this, if I talk about these scary thoughts that I'm having, what's going to happen to me? Are are my children going to be taken away? you know, so many things kind of come up that you see that we still there's still something there and there's something there specifically around mothers, women and mothers who are struggling in their roles.

Nam Kiwanuka: I was kind of shocked that there's also stigma around certain diagnosis. I always say is it diagnosis or diagnoses?

Misty Pratt: I think it's like singular is diagnosis and then diagnoses is more than one.

Nam Kiwanuka: I always like English is my fourth language. I'm doing the best that I can. Um but you know what you wrote in the book that certain uh diagnosis um have stigma attached around it something like borderline personality disorder. Um and and you also wrote that this is a a diagnosis that actually women receive more. Um can you talk about why that is and also the stigma attached around that? Mhm. So, borderline personality disorder specifically can be traced directly back to the diagnosis of hysteria. So, we we would have to go back and talk about Freud, which we don't need to, but uh you know, suffice it to say that this was a category of diagnosis that we didn't know what else to do with people. So, it wasn't like they were having neurosis, which was like anxiety and depression. Um, so they were placed into this category of like, you know, you're just sort of on the borderline. And over time, the the criteria that that came to be for diagnosing BPD was, you know, somebody who was manipulative and crafty and a lot of those adjectives that we maybe had attributed to women back in the day when we're talking about the witch hunts and about those, you know, those kind of crafty women, those those women that had kind of a direct line to some sort of spiritual world. And so you get into this whole um you know and I don't think any healthcare provider these days would say oh yes that's what I feel about about people with BPD but you certainly hear comments from healthcare providers that you know don't listen to her she's BPD um you know she's going to lie she's going to try to manipulate you and so there's this leftover piece we have from the 1800s 1900s that we're still grappling with today. Some care providers have actually argued that BPD doesn't really exist, that it's likely a complex trauma, so complex PTSD of something traumatic happening early in life, and then these these girls and women are then developing a way to to cope with that.

Nam Kiwanuka: You mentioned this a little bit before, but women are told to lean in that we can do anything and have anything if we work hard and be resilient. I'll whisper that word because I'm tired of being resilient. But but like if you're living with a a chronic illness like endometriosis, which takes years to diagnose and it's very painful, you're still expected to show up at all the things and to manage that load quietly. How does this mental load impact our mental well-being?

Misty Pratt: Yes, it's such a big part and I, you know, there's was an interesting study that came out just a year or two ago that showed that there's this huge overlap between endometriosis and mental illness. So, a really high percentage of people with endo had a mental illness of some kind. And so, the question becomes, is it the the chronic illness that leads to the anxiety and depression or is it the mental illness that that then kind of overlaps with that endo? And we're experiencing both. And I think when you listen to women and their stories, what you hear over and over again is that when a chronic illness is not being treated, you know, in a way that's going to make you feel better over time, your mental health starts to decline. And so you can actually trace the fact that women are not receiving the care that they need in a timely manner to worsening depression and anxiety and other issues. So it's part of your whole your mind and your body are connected in some way.

Nam Kiwanuka: Yes. And even there are some studies now show showing that there's this could be this biological connection between the endometriosis and mental illness that there is something there in the body that's kind of connecting the two because it's we're all one. It's not just the brains floating off in this space and you know our body is separate. Have you heard of the story in England of a mom who was put in a psychiatric ward? I think it she when she was around 55 during menopause.

Misty Pratt: Yes. And she had a mental so they thought that it was actually a mental illness and it turned out to be menopause. And because her sons advocated for her, she's now going to concerts and she's living her life. And I only I can only imagine how many stories that have happened that we don't know about.

Misty Pratt: Yes. And when I read that story, I cried because I thought of my grandmother and I thought, was her psychotic break menopause? Like, could she if she had been treated in a way that they understood this transitional period might be a bit of a trigger and could we could we correct that with hormonal therapy? What would have changed? And so I to me I was just I was so happy for this woman and then yet I was emotional for my grandmother and emotional now and what she went through and how she wasn't cared for in the way that I think she might have needed to be.

Nam Kiwanuka: I'm so sorry. And um this book I think is going to help other women to be to feel as if you know their stories matter and it's going to help them feel seen. So thank you for writing it.

Misty Pratt: Thank you so much. Um, we talked a little bit about medication because, uh, we only have a little bit of time left. Um, but we talked a little bit about medication. There's a stigma to, uh, take medication, but there's also stigma to not take the medication or if you're on the medication to get off the medication. Why is that?

Misty Pratt: I think social media has made things a little bit, uh, divided. So, you know, we have all the messages now of people, and this is so great. People being like, I take medication, this helps me. Take your meds. Right? It's so amazing. But then there's this darker side of, you know, people are very anti-psychiatry. They say medications are dangerous. They say, you know, something's going to bad is going to happen to you if you take them. And then there's all of us stuck in the middle trying to make these decisions. And so, it's very individual and and personally for me, I tried I tried many times and the side effects were just too much for me. And so, I had to find a way through without it. And luckily I'm privileged enough and I had those resources to do that. Um but I think for a lot of people we don't even give them the option like just like that story about the the mother we say just keep taking your meds. It's it's easier you know even though people are coming in and saying you know I I have no more uh libido that's gone. I you know all these other side effects that are happening that are really challenging for them but we're just sort of saying just take your meds it's okay. So yeah it's tricky.

Nam Kiwanuka: I hope it's not too intrusive, but I just wanted to follow up. What did you find helped you?

Misty Pratt: Yeah. So, I think it took me about a year to get off the medication and for my brain to sort of recalibrate, I think. And so, once I got through that part, I knew I had to do something to to get through and and you know, address my mental illness without the medication. And so, I started exploring different therapy. And in the book I talk a little bit about cognitive behavioral therapy as not always the right answer for a lot of people and a lot of people don't actually say it helps very much um in specific circumstances yes but I discovered somatic therapy which is like a body-based therapy and it works from like a bottom up process meaning I started being asked to tap into my body like what do I feel in my my belly what do I feel in my chest what do I feel in my shoulders and and there was something about that that I needed because I'd spent my whole life just cut off, right? I was all up here thinking, thinking, thinking and nothing was going on in the rest of my body. And so that really was a game changer for me and I continued to to do that today. But I pay out of pocket because I don't have coverage for that.

Nam Kiwanuka: Well, in our final moments here, um, having written the book and all the people that you spoke to, I think it was like 40 pages in the book is notes.

Misty Pratt: Yes.

Nam Kiwanuka: I was like, this is going a little overboard.

Nam Kiwanuka: This is amazing. Um, but, uh, looking forward like what makes you hopeful about the state of research in women's mental health?

Misty Pratt: Oh, there's so many things. I mean, I feel really hopeful here in Canada because I think we do have this ground swell of support for more women's health research. If we look at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, they've got a whole Women's Mental Health Research Institute that's that's starting to look at sex and gender and all of these these issues with our mental illness and other brain diseases. And so when I see those things happening, I just feel this sense of like yes, we are going to get there. It's going to take time, but we have to be on guard because what of what we talked about at the beginning in terms of this sort of reversal or clawing back that we need to continue to push as you people like me, advocates, people like you who are doing this podcast, if we can continue to keep this in the conversation, I think we will eventually get there, but it's it's going to take time.

Nam Kiwanuka: You also mentioned that you asked every researcher about what makes them hopeful. Why did you do that?

Misty Pratt: I think when you're in in research, I recall this as a researcher is that you get bogged down in the day-to-day sometimes. And right now there's many, you know, scientists and researchers are experiencing a lot of challenges including cutting to to their funding. And so I wanted to get a sense of what it was that kept them going. You know, what what was it that they saw that that that then allowed them to say, "Yes, this is exactly what I need to be doing." And I got a lot of great responses. Um, but I will also add just for I also asked women what were some of the things that that helped or made them hopeful. And time and time again they said someone who listened to me,

Misty Pratt: Someone who just gave me that extra couple minutes, sat with me and said, "This is really hard. I've got you. We're going to get through this together." And that over and over again, that's what I heard and I continue to hear that today. And so that also gives me hope that healthcare providers can work on those kind of listening skills.

Nam Kiwanuka: Yeah.

Misty Pratt: Giving that kind of empathetic support.

Nam Kiwanuka: Yeah. Just a validation and to say I know you're in pain. I can help you or and just to listen to you like it's not all in your head. Right.

Misty Pratt: Exactly.

Nam Kiwanuka: Thanks. I liked how I did that. Um any uh any final thoughts?

Misty Pratt: No, I think that's it. Uh I you know I just really the the goal of the book was for people to read it and see themselves in it hopefully in some of those stories and I hope that that's what's happened and I hope that more people continue to write about this different voices not just me but many diverse voices so that we can change things for for the better but also for everyone.

Nam Kiwanuka: Misty Pratt, thank you so much for your time. This has been amazing. Appreciate it.

Misty Pratt: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to be here.

Nam Kiwanuka: This was Mistreated. Thanks for listening. You can follow our show wherever you download your podcast so that you can get notified each time a new episode is available. We would love to hear your feedback. You can write me an email at mistreatedpodcast@tvo.org or reach out to me on social media.

Nam Kiwanuka: Here's a comment from our episode on Ella's Danlo syndrome. I am in tears right now because Sydney is basically telling my story, too. I know very well the horrors that she's had to go through just to be taken seriously. I'm in Northern Ontario where complex medical specialists and modalities are basically non-existent. It took my doctor 6 years just to take my dislocation seriously. I have hyper mobile EDS and another 3 years in a car accident to begin looking into CCI. Just went for the first set of X-rays yesterday. I'm really looking forward to your upcoming segment that discusses things like this more in detail. Thank you from all of us. Thank you so much for your comment. I really do hope that you get the care that you need. This week's episode was produced by Matthew Amara and me and edited by Colin Kish. Digital shorts by Ariana Longley. Camera work by Max Stussy. Teleprompting by Alyssa Verley. Production support from Jonathan Hallowell and TVO's digital media services team. Lori F is the executive producer of digital. John Ferry is vice president programming and content. Thanks so much for listening.