Listen: Why labelling women 'too emotional' is entirely unhelpful.

Most women have been called ‘too emotional’ on at least one occasion.

Many of us have even had the term ‘crazy bitch’, or ‘drama queen’ thrown our way at some stage in our life.

Female anxiety has been seen as a source of fun all the way from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (Mrs Bennet and her ‘nerves’) to jokes in the seventies about having a ‘cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down’.

More recently, former Labor Leader Mark Latham tore into journalist Lisa Pryor suggesting she hated her children because she wrote about taking antidepressants.  So it was no huge surprise that when Mia Freedman revealed her experience with an anxiety disorder on Debrief Daily, she was criticised and accused of promoting drugs by the website Crikey.

In our latest ‘Just Between Us’ podcast Rebecca Huntley and I delved further into Anxiety Disorders.

Mia discussed her experience, the reaction to her piece (more than a quarter of a million people read the post) and how anxiety disorders differ from being ‘stressed out’. 

You can hear the entire thing here in iTunes (please subscribe) or below in Sound Cloud: 

Dr Viviana Wuthrich from the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University says anxiety disorders are definitely more common in women.

But she says they are often misunderstood and dismissed as ‘melodrama’.

One in three Australian women will experience a level of anxiety that restricts their enjoyment of life. But modern living is not necessarily to blame. In fact, experts believe that anxiety conditions are just better recognised now rather than being over diagnosed or  increasingly common.  Men are not immune and more likely to channel their issues into substance abuse.

To be fair though it’s not just men accusing us of over reacting and needing to calm down.

In a new book called ‘Moody Bitches’ psychiatrist Julie Holland argues that women are being over diagnosed by a macho society that desires a ‘medicated normal’.

She believes our female emotions are a source of great power and worries that they are often being artificially flattened. Yet Holland works in the United States where anxiety is far more likely to lead to medication (one in four American women are on psychiatric medication).

There’s actually no evidence that Australian women are being given tablets for being stressed out. Dr Wuthrich says practitioners here are very aware of the risks and benefits of medication and it is only prescribed when people‘s lives are deeply affected.

Related Content: "I am finally ready to talk about my anxiety"

Mia Freedman says she’s not pushing pills - she is simply sharing what has worked for her. She uses medication in conjunction with therapy, exercise and other measures to manage her anxiety.

It’s too easy and too cruel to dismiss women’s pain as crazy, unhinged and neurotic. Such attitudes are dangerous, hurtful and unhelpful. Many women are actually loathe to even consider medication and judgmental attitudes and stigma only make them less likely to reach out and get help.

I know many people who popped a lot of illegal substances in their twenties, yet refuse to take legal drugs in their forties and fifties when they are in desperate need of help.

The reality is that anxiety disorders can strike anyone at anytime and even those with the calmest of dispositions are not immune. On the podcast we spoke to Ann-Marie deBettencor who has rarely been flustered or upset. Then, suddenly, in her forties she felt a bizarre tide of fury and anxiety come over her.

Soon after this the hot flushes began. The onset of menopause can trigger anxiety, as can childbirth, a lack of sleep and other major life events.  The closest my life came to falling apart was when I had a two year old, a baby who only ever slept for twenty minutes at a stretch and had to be carried all day long.  I refused to get help because I was too proud.

Rebecca Huntley found things unravelling when she was slugging away at her PhD; when her anxiety manifested in a fear of flying and then escalators she reached out. For any woman, or man, the experience of an anxiety disorder with panic attacks are confusing, frightening and devastating. We need to be careful not to add stigma, shame and ostracism on top.

If you ever feel panic, terror and dread that is constant and not related to an actual event, get help.  If you have a friend who you feel is unravelling, talk to them gently and calmly about going to the doctor.  Let the experts help those struggling to make the decision about medication.  Not the armchair critics.