Weight, medications among women’s challenges

By Kim Palchikoff

Monday, Oct. 3, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Depression, which the World Health Organization predicts will be the second-leading cause of global disability burden by 2020, is twice as common in women as in men.

I grew up hearing a lot about the horrors of women’s addiction to Valium back in the 1960s and 1970s. My mother was prescribed Valium after her divorce, and getting off of it, she said, was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done. She wasn’t the only one. Valium became the Western world’s most widely prescribed answer to anxiety and, according to legend, was the first drug to reach $1 billion in sales.

The Rolling Stones addressed the Valium craze with their 1966 song “Mother’s Little Helper.” Its lyrics go like this: “Mother needs something today to calm her down. And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill.”

Eating disorders are another gigantic psychiatric problem for women in America. I had a friend in college who had bulimia.

Despite the fact that she was ultra-thin, she’d confess to me that she’d frequently eat an apple, then go to the bathroom and forcefully throw it up, then go run 5 miles to make sure she didn’t ingest any calories.

Her condition was hard for me to understand: If she didn’t want to eat the apple in the first place, why would she bother to do so and then puke it up? She tried to explain, but it was confusing. I was 18.

She said I didn’t understand her problems. She came from the wealthy Palo Alto, Calif., area, where her father was a professor at Stanford. Women’s weight, she explained, was a popular teenage topic at Palo Alto High School. Many of her high school friends had eating disorders.

They were more concerned with their body image, she said, than with being healthy. Big breasts (or any kind of breasts) were out; bony bikini bodies were in. She told me she ended up going to a lot of therapy, trying to figure it all out.

Women’s weight is the source of much mental angst. In an age in which nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese, there is good cause for eating healthfully. Throwing up food is not healthy. Adults — and children — die from this starvation process.

At last week’s presidential debate between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, women and women’s bodies once again became an issue.

Clinton brought up Trump’s demeaning obsession with women’s body size and the fact that he’d called women pigs and dogs. She brought up the 1996 Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, whom he previously called Miss Piggy, highlighting one root of women’s poor mental health: the unending objectification of women’s bodies.

Even though other anti-anxiety medications have replaced Valium, pharmaceutical companies still are targeting women, getting them hooked on this antidepressant or that one.

New York psychiatrist and author Julie Holland writes that the antidepressant advertising aimed at women by pharmaceutical companies has evolved from “Should I take an antidepressant?” to “Which one should I take?”

Weight gain from psychiatric medications is also a common topic of discussion in psychiatrists’ offices. I can testify to this. Many doctors over the years have asked me if I “really” want to risk gaining extra pounds by taking a certain medication designed to keep my mood swings in check. Weight gain is a common side effect of many psychiatric drugs, but really what it means is that they’re an appetite stimulant, so instead of eating more salad, hungry patients turn to quick and easy junk food and then blame the drugs for the extra calories.

It’s too bad doctors focus so much on weight gain as a side effect. Perhaps doctors are afraid clients who gain weight might ditch the drug later on. Psychiatrists should recommend medications that have benefits that they feel outweigh the side effects. And explain everything in detail, including how eating healthy can help counteract some of the weight gain. “A lot of weight” could mean 10 pounds. Big deal.

Women’s mental health is a complex issue, involving things such as body-image issues, depression and the multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies’ marketing campaigns that target females. It’s one of those stories without the Hollywood ending.

It’s depressing.

Kim Palchikoff, a Nevada Humanities grant recipient, writes about mental health. Her Facebook page is NVMindsMatter.