Flags

Women's Health and Education Center (WHEC)

Focus on Mental Health

Editor's Note

Gynecological practice in all cultures has always been affected by folklore, taboos, and religious and civil sanctions to control and regulate sexual activity and reproduction. The gynecologist is a primary care physician for women, often from childhood across the life cycle - from menarche through adolescence, young adulthood, pregnancy, menopause, and old age. To perform function well, gynecologists need to know about the psycho-sexual as well as the physical development of women. Gynecologists need to be sensitive to their own attitudes, values, prejudices, and personality, and they must understand how these characteristics will influence their practice and their patient's decision to trust and work collaboratively with them.

An insight into the patient's basic life situation and knowing something about her work and social situations is important. Serious illnesses almost universally produce depression; the affected individual feels loss of control and seems helpless to stop onrushing events. Those emotions work their way from brain into hormonal and immune functions, intensifying the underlying problem with consequent deepening of helplessness and depression.

The science and art of medicine converge at a point, where physicians become basically concerned with the whole of the human condition. The most important development in modern medicine is the recognition of a biochemistry of the emotions, underwritten by fast-accumulating evidence of specific interactions between the brain and the endocrine and immune systems. Many contemporary medical researchers believe that bacteriological, viral, and other organisms are a secondary and not a primary cause of illness.

Women's Health and Education Center (WHEC)

Women's Health & Education Center
Dedicated to Women's and Children's Well-being and Health Care Worldwide
www.womenshealthsection.com