On the History of the Migraine Personality with Joanna Kempner

Sensitivity to light, sounds, and sometimes smells, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes hours spent in darkened rooms. If you suffer from migraines, then you're all too familiar with these symptoms, which may affect you infrequently or as often as several times each week. Migraines are three times more common among women than men, and are worse prematurely and in menopause when women may experience them for the first time. But it's not just the numbers that are different, women are perceived and treated differently.

Today I'm sharing the rich and relevant conversation I had with Dr. Joanna Kempner, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers, who is doing important work on gender politics and pain, specifically the striking difference between how men and women with pain are treated by doctors.

In this episode, we explore the historical emergence of the 'migraine personality,' hysteria, and further disparities in pain treatment for women of color. We explore the societal factors that lead women to feel guilty for speaking up about their pain, whether it be chronic pain caused by a condition like migraine or acute pain for example, with a heart attack, and the ways that the stigma of pain affects pain research and the implications of this for the current and future treatment of women's pain.

Joanna and I discuss:

The historical context for the diagnosis previously called ‘hysteria’

The stigma women who have migraines might experience

How people who suffer from migraines take on stereotypes

What happens when a migraine is not recognized as a disability

How the pharmaceutical industry plays on women’s guilt

Why the medical community so often disbelieve women

The patient-blaming language of medication overuse

The irrationality of the opioid crisis

How and why women of color remain invisible in medical research and have their pain treated differently

Tune in to learn why these disparities in pain treatment still exist, how they are affecting our care, and how we can addres this in our own lives.

Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in to your body, yourself, and this podcast! Please share the love by sending this to someone in your life who could benefit from the kinds of things we talk about in this space. Make sure to follow your host on Instagram @dr.avivaromm and go to avivaromm.com to join the conversation. Check out Joanna’s incredible work and grab a copy of her book Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health at www.joannakempner.com