Doing Harm
Maya Duysenbery
The medical system is slow to change, and Duysenbery documents how the sexism endemic to the industry is still perpetuated–even by well-meaning healthcare professionals.
Women are slower to receive diagnoses, even when presenting with identical symptoms as men. Women are also more likely to have their experiences discounted, or their reporting of symptoms doubted.
Reading this book will inform you about the ways that sexism can manifest even in high-level medical care. Understanding what could go wrong means that the next time you need healthcare, you will be an informed patient, able to advocate for yourself and get the truth–and the treatment–you need.
Lost Connections
Johann Hari
The drugs don’t work. Research has consistently shown that for patients seeking help with anxiety and depression, medications are ineffective. Due to interference from multinational drug companies and other factors, too often patients don’t get told this bald fact.
Hari, a longtime taker of SSRI’s, confronts the data and consults with the world’s top experts on mental health.
What he finds surprises him: both the causes and cures for our national epidemic of anxiety and depression are in the way we’ve structured our communities and daily lives.
This uplifting book–building from unassailable research and expert testimony–prescribes nine solutions to alleviate the anxiety and depression so many of us have been told are just brain chemistry.
