this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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That's fair! From the same perspective, there are significant issues with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders like ADHD and Autism, especially in relation to gender.
But research into that is actively happening, and those issues are specifically recognized and being tackled. Autism in particular was heavily impacted by genuine differences in presentation that naturally reduce the likelihood of social recognition (and therefore reduce the social pressure toward diagnosis):
https://autism.org/women-in-autism/#gender-bias
Don't get me wrong, historical research was terrible. And, to this day misdiagnosis and undertreatment is rampant. Women are less likely to receive adequate treatment for pain and are more likely to face delays in various diagnoses, due to almost entirely social influences like male doctors just not believing their patients. Mental health and psychiatric disorders in particular are obviously heavily impacted by that.
But we also only know those things because of modern research. Studies need representational sampling to get through any IRB, and so the majority of medical research starts with men and women from the beginning, reports any differences in the results, and generally keeps trying until it reaches positive clinical outcomes for both.
In the case of Autism, it was recognized that there was a 4:1 men:women diagnostic ratio, and they kept looking at that number until they found possible explanations why.
At the very least I think that the much larger issue is currently on the other end of the equation - if we could get those positive clinical outcomes actually delivered clinically, rather than theoretically.