![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/04\/ENDO-1-scaled.jpg\")
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Dr Druit explains there are strong links to psychological and social wellbeing when it comes to pelvic pain.<\/p>\n
“Pain is made in your brain and felt in your body. Pain is the human condition of suffering,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So, if we reduce it to an exclusive biomedical approach, then people end up going around in circles.”<\/p>\n
My own experience is still in its early stages \u2013 despite being years down the track; eight years of appointments, pills, uncertainty and conflicting advice.<\/p>\n
For a long time, I told myself this was something I had to live with. That is the quiet injustice of pelvic pain: it teaches people to endure what should have been taken seriously much earlier.<\/p>\n
Australia has led important research on endometriosis, and the renewed focus on women’s pain is welcome.<\/p>\n
But the next step is bigger than one condition. It is better education, more pain literacy and a health system that treats pelvic pain as a serious health issue, not a private failure.<\/p>\n
Dr Druit said as a nation leading the way in endometriosis research, we should also be spearheading pain research and understanding.<\/p>\n
“I would love Australians to be the most pain literate population in the world, because we would be so much more productive and happy,” she said.<\/p>\n
We need to stop asking women to prove their suffering before it is believed. We need to understand pain earlier, treat it more broadly, and make room for the reality that not every pain-filled body fits a simple diagnosis.<\/p>\n
Nyah Barnes is a journalist at the Times News Group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SINCE I was a teenager, I assumed pain was simply part of being female. Every month, the same pattern returned: pain so disruptive that I learned to organise my life around it, and so normalised that I also learned to doubt its significance. So when I sat through an ultrasound and found myself thinking, “I […]<\/p>\n