Hacker News Reader

My girlfriend is a child and family therapist, a public school teacher in a special needs class before that. They didn't mention this in grad school, but she started figuring out kids had attachment disorders related to PTSD instead of their original autism diagnoses while she was still interning. It didn't sound like it was that big a revelation. It sounded like it's a pretty common misdiagnosis.

View on HN

Wondering if this was true for girls as well as boys. Boys tend to be diagnosed at higher rates, though the prevalence is — now — understood to be the same. For years girls and women went undiagnosed with both conditions. It was only after Van der Kolk characterized PTSD in male veterans that he noticed his female patients — who had never been to war, but were subject to many other kinds of abuse - exhibited similar symptoms.

We’re still learning about how different kinds of trauma effect the neuroendocrine system, and gender bias makes it harder to study. I’m very much hoping those biases can be corrected in future medical research (and indeed, I know many younger researchers are acutely aware of the problem and are working to rectify it).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com