Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain

14 reviews

bea_reads_books's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative

3.75

This book has a lot of important information, and a lot of things I did not know. I do wish that trans and indigenous people hadn’t felt so much like a footnote though, and I don’t think disability was mentioned even once that I remember.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Medical content, Medical trauma, Gaslighting, and Pandemic/Epidemic

tender_onion's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

3.5

With the exception of quoting others, the language chosen by the author is cisheteronormative, and almost exclusively describes experiences of cisgender women. 

This was a bit of a let down for a book that was otherwise intersectional, as it failed to share/reflect on how many of the topics discussed also impact trans people, and not just people who were assigned female at birth (including trans men, trans women, nonbinary folks, two-spirit people, agender people, gender nonconforming folks, and everyone else whose gender resides outside of the gender binary). 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

jrrrck's review against another edition

2.0

thanks to netgalley & tiller press for the review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women is just okay. As other reviewers have pointed out, the marketing is a bit off. The title and description should have made it more clear that Hossain's dominant focus is sexism and racism within maternity healthcare. Most of the stories, policies, statistics, and suggestions related specifically to maternal health which is just one aspect of women's health and a facet that many women do not experience! She's also notably focused specifically on cisgender women's experience; at no point are there stories or reference points that introduce how anti-trans bias affect women's healthcare (or, on the flip side, care related to pregnancy).

There's also no substantive exploration of how either anti-fat bias affects healthcare access for women or women of color, especially black women. This is a huge point of health inequity and there are resources available to address it; it's a glaring omission and weakens the overall introduction and analysis of the topic. The primary mention of it was towards the end when she quotes Regen Chastain's advice about avoiding anti-fat bias at the doctor's office (which just amounts to ... look up doctor's ahead of time? lmao). For a more helpful resource for this specifically, I really recommend What's Wrong with Fat? by Abigail Saguy.

Finally, there's very little exploration of how financial inequity within healthcare and how that negatively impacts women and women of color. Again, really surprising especially given that she correctly identifies and highlights how much the United States underperform when it comes to maternity health. But believing women and women's pain isn't the only point of inequity within women's healthcare. The prohibitive cost of healthcare in the United States is part of the inequity that is almost completely ignored in The Pain Gap. 

If this book were to serve as an introduction to the topic, it would be missing major facets of the issue. I wouldn't recommend it, unfortunately. I had much higher hopes!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Domestic abuse, Racism, Sexism, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy

sisakat's review against another edition

informative sad medium-paced

2.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Blood, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

The subject matter of the entire book is quite heavy reading. The book mostly doesn't go too graphic description on most of these, but it does cover a lot of stories involving women facing sexism and/or racism in a medical context (especially maternal/child birth situations), and the outcomes related to that. There is significant discussions of hospitals, pain, injuries, illness, and death, with both broad statistics and individuals' personal stories. There's at least a few instances it describes sexual assault, but it's written in a more informational tone, and not extended detail. There's some discussion of historical (long ago to near -present) medical experimentation. It also discusses the events of the pandemic and George Floyd protests in relating them to women's health.

tmchopra's review against another edition

challenging informative fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Chronic illness, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Sexual violence, and Terminal illness

cheuksin's review against another edition

I’ll probably come back to it

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Medical trauma

Moderate: Racism and Sexism

thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting

Minor: Homophobia and Transphobia

bxtskr's review against another edition

informative sad fast-paced

3.75

With a very rare exceptions (notably the parts regarding covid) this book doesn't say anything that hasn't been said by radical Black feminists and health advocates for decades but then comes to extremely liberal, half-assed solutions. I've never so much agreed with the premise and hated a conclusion in this field. Also an unnecessary amount of praise for Pres. Biden's work on VAWA without mentioning the accusations of violence against him!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Chronic illness, Fatphobia, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, and Classism

misssleepless's review against another edition

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Medical trauma, Abortion, and Pregnancy

meltingpages's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring sad

3.5

I loved learning about this topic, but I do think the synopsis is a bit misleading. It focuses more on pregnancies and how women are treated by the healthcare system when I thought it would be a variety of different medical topics. It also has a pretty strong focus on COVID-19 and how that is affecting how women give birth, but again, I thought it would cover more on how women are often misdiagnosed in areas other than just pregnancies.

The writing is also a bit weird, a few times I thought that my audiobook was repeating sentences but the author would just repeat herself pretty frequently. I also couldn't quite grasp who exactly this was for, if it was meant to educate people not familiar with the topic or to give additional information to people who know already about reproductive justice. It also skipped around from the author's personal life, to anecdotes from other women, to quoting legislature that was passed or is being lobbied for.

Overall, it's an extremely important topic and the book is definitely worth it for that alone, but it just wasn't what I was expecting it to be. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Sexism, and Pregnancy

Minor: Medical content and Medical trauma