Endometriosis education: Programs available to Bendigo schools teach students about pelvic pain

Pelvic Pain Education Program (PPEP) executive director Kirsty Mead said the organisation aims to visit approximately 100 schools, having already visited 20 plus Catholic and independent schools in the state.

"At the beginning of the year, we were given the go ahead to commence the program using the federal Department of Health funding across all of Australia, in independent and Catholic schools," she said.

"Then the Victorian government has just announced that (it's) going to co-fund the program to match funding from the federal government so that we can deliver to independent, Catholic and government schools - so the whole cohort across Victoria.

"So if there are schools in Bendigo that want the program, they just need to contact us and we'll book them in."

The heavily scaffolded program aims not just to educate but to provide doorways for next steps.

"(We're) making sure that once students leave the session and the one-on-one time with the clinical educator that they have somewhere to go," Ms Mead said.

"So we're going to talk to GPs, physios, other health practitioners and make sure that they have information that we've been in their area and they may see some students with pelvic pain come in."

The program talks about pain in general including the neuroscience of pain, so even though the program was born out of the national action plan for endometriosis, all students can take something away.

When it comes to the debilitating disorder of endometriosis, an estimated one in nine women, girls and people assigned female at birth will deal with the condition, with a length to diagnosis of approximately seven years.

Ms Mead said she hoped programs like PPEP talks would help reduce that wait for a diagnosis so the whole health trajectory for young people can be improved.

Following every session, Ms Mead said PPEP facilitators are approached by students who talk about their own experiences or ask if the pain they experience is normal, and the assistance PPEP can provide is often life-altering.

Although menstrual health is included in the Australian curriculum, Western Sydney University research released this week indicated many young people in Australia are looking online for answers, particularly when school-based education falls short.

One of the key researchers on the Menstrual Health Education in Australian Schools article, Dr. Christina Curry, said unaddressed period pain can significantly impact someone's life.

"When untreated, (period pain) can interfere with educational performance and engagement and lead to absence from educational, sporting, extra-curricular and workplace activities," she said.

Another key researcher in menstrual health, Dr Mike Armour, said help-seeking in younger people is also worryingly low.

"In Australia, around 90 per cent of those under 25 report regular period pain but less than half of those seek medical assistance," he said.

"This seems to be common across geographical and cultural boundaries."

Through a lack of education on conditions like endometriosis, students with possible complications are left thinking their pain is normal.

A 24-year-old university student from Queensland was cited in the study, saying they "assumed the pain, vomiting and general unpleasantness caused by endometriosis was normal".

They put this ignorance down to not learning about hormones, potential reproductive health complications like dysmenorrhea or endometriosis or having any information about baseline "normal" period experiences.

Royal Women's Hospital gynaecologist Dr Charlotte Reddington said she hopes improved education would help people get help sooner.

"I think it's (PPEP talks) a really fantastic step in the right direction," Dr Reddington said.

"I think it will really help promote awareness about women's health periods, and period pain in general and I use the word women's health but acknowledge that not everybody with a uterus identifies as a woman and that not all women have a uterus.

"A huge barrier in diagnosis is people not seeking help and not realising that having severe pain with your periods is not normal and there can be treatments for it."

Dr Reddington explained that endometriosis, one of the prominent causes of pelvic pain, manifests differently in different people - with no symptoms for some and intense pain for others.

"Some people experience difficulties getting pregnant and that's the only symptom that we see of endometriosis," she said.

There are also a number of other related conditions that cause pain beyond endometriosis, and Dr Reddington encouraged everyone to talk more about their experiences and reduce the stigma around reproductive health.

And while she said periods can cause some pain without something nasty going on, pain that stops people engaging with activities they enjoy or reduces their quality of life, that certainly warrants further investigation.

"Not just doctors but society is changing and being more aware of these issues and being aware of endometriosis and pelvic pain," Dr Reddington said.

"I do think that times are changing - it's starting to become mainstream on the news and we're starting to have politicians interested in it.

Schools wanting to organise an educational program for students can visit pelvicpain.org.au/ppep-talk-schools-program/

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