What to do when it's not a broken leg Lately, I've been getting a different kind of phone call. Not from the patient themselves, but from their mother. Their sister. A husband, trying to figure out how to get his wife to a first appointment. A parent, calling on behalf of an adult child who is struggling but isn't ready, or isn't able, to make that call themselves. These conversations have been happening often enough that I want to talk directly to the people making them: the family members...

Setting the Record Straight on Hormone Therapy In the summer of 2002, a headline changed the course of women’s health for a generation. The Women’s Health Initiative — a large, federally funded study — announced that it was stopping one of its arms early. The news: hormone therapy increased the risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots. The message that spread, rapidly and loudly, was simple: hormone therapy is dangerous. Women should stop taking it. Providers should...

WOMEN’S HEALTH SERIES • POST 5 OF 6 She sits with her provider and tries to explain it. The anxiety that arrives without warning. The irritability that flares over small things and then leaves her feeling guilty and confused. The depression that settled in quietly, like fog, and won’t quite lift. The sense that she has become someone she doesn’t fully recognize. And the response she gets, far too often, is a gentle suggestion to try therapy, get more sleep, reduce stress. Maybe a prescription...