The goal of this petition is to raise awareness for women with TN and get the American Dental Association to create a curriculum for future dental students to learn about the ways women are disproportionately affected by facial pain and how they are often misdiagnosed or untreated due to gender biases in medical instruction. 

Why you should sign:

According to the Facial Pain Association: "Women experience gender bias when they are forced to seek pain relief at the emergency room or when she visits her dentist. A woman with trigeminal neuralgia may not receiving the same treatment and medication as a man. Medical training has its own ‘hidden curriculum’ full of bias. Pain often does not show up in a scan or a test, so a woman visiting her dentist for facial pain may not have her symptoms fully taken into account by her dentist. Women have been described as exaggerating their pain, and a 2018 study published in Pain Research and Management found that doctors often described women as “malingerers.”A 2009 study review published in the Journal of Pain (the official journal of the American Pain Society) conclusively found that the most common types of pain are more prevalent in women, including postoperative and procedural pain, musculoskeletal and mouth and facial pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, and abdominal and pelvic pain.
To make matters worse, women may feel TN pain more acutely than men. A 2012 study conducted at Stanford University revealed that women also experience pain more acutely and intensely than men, especially women of color.
Furthermore, research on women and TN or pain is not well-studied: men, not women. This despite the fact that 70 percent of chronic pain is experienced by women. Nearly 80 percent of pain studies are conducted on males or on male mice."
 

What can be done?

The Facial Pain Association says-

"Raise awareness with dentists so that they reduce the number of dental procedures they perform on women who don’t actually have dental problems, but neuropathic facial pain."

"Educate doctors about TN so they can identify cases and refer patients to a neurologist or facial pain specialist."

"Also, empower and support women in becoming more vocal advocates of their own healthcare and educate women about their TN diagnosis, and arm them with information they can use when they visit their doctor."