Delilah Hamlin’s ‘Mystery’ Seizures Weren’t a Mystery at All — They Were a Symptom of a System That Fails Women’s Pain

When Delilah Hamlin finally learned that years of crippling pain, seizures, anxiety, and substance misuse were linked to undiagnosed endometriosis, she didn’t just solve a medical puzzle — she exposed a much bigger story. Her experience reads like a case study in how women’s pain is minimized, how menstrual health is siloed from the rest of medicine, and how celebrities are increasingly becoming de facto public-health educators because the system is underperforming.

On its face, this is a Hollywood-adjacent health story: a model and musician, the daughter of well-known actors, endures years of unexplained symptoms until surgery for endometriosis brings relief, including from seizures that worsened around her period. Beneath that is a systemic indictment: delayed diagnosis of a common disease, failure to connect gynecological and neurological symptoms, and a mental health and addiction spiral that followed the medical system’s inability to find a root cause.

Hamlin’s story matters because it crystallizes several converging trends: the longstanding underfunding of women’s health, the gender pain gap, the rise in self-advocacy and self-diagnosis via social media, and the complex interplay between chronic illness, mental health, and substance use in young adults.

The bigger picture: Endometriosis and the long history of dismissed women’s pain

Endometriosis is not rare, niche, or obscure. Estimates vary, but major medical organizations typically cite that about 1 in 10 reproductive-age women are affected globally. That’s tens of millions of people. Yet multiple studies show that the average diagnostic delay ranges from 7 to 10 years from symptom onset.

Hamlin describes “really painful periods,” frequent seizures around menstruation, trips out of high school classes because of symptoms, and multiple gynecologists who never mentioned endometriosis. That experience is strikingly consistent with broader data:

• A 2017 study in the journal Fertility and Sterility found that women with endometriosis saw an average of four or more physicians before receiving a diagnosis.
• Research in the UK has documented diagnostic delays longer than some cancers, despite endometriosis being non-malignant.
• Women’s pain is historically framed as “emotional” or “tolerable,” leading to mislabeling as anxiety, stress, or “normal period cramps.”

The pattern is old and deeply embedded. For centuries, terms like “hysteria” were deployed to pathologize women’s physical complaints as psychological. Modern medicine has shed the vocabulary, but not always the bias. Studies repeatedly show women are more likely than men to have their pain underestimated and undertreated, especially when it involves conditions like pelvic pain or autoimmune disorders that lack obvious lab findings.

In Hamlin’s case, she was diagnosed with PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and struggled with anxiety and depression — real conditions in their own right. But the key question is why the presence of mental health symptoms seemed to substitute for a deeper search for an underlying physical driver. This “either-or” thinking — it’s either mental or physical — is precisely what many experts say needs to change.

What this really means: A single body, multiple silos

One detail in Hamlin’s story stands out: she reports seizures that intensified around her period, and those episodes improved after surgery to remove endometriosis implants. That strongly suggests catamenial (menstrual-related) seizure activity — a well-described but under-recognized phenomenon where hormonal fluctuations influence seizure patterns.

This is where medical siloing becomes dangerous. Neurology, gynecology, psychiatry, and immunology often operate as separate worlds, even though the patient has only one body. In practice, that can look like this:

• Gynecologists focus on cycle irregularities and cramps, perhaps offering hormonal birth control or pain medication but not always investigating deeper for endometriosis or adenomyosis.
• Neurologists treat seizures with anti-epileptic drugs without always probing hormonal cycling or gynecologic history.
• Mental health providers and primary care doctors treat anxiety and depression, sometimes with benzodiazepines or antidepressants, without fully mapping how much of that distress is driven by chronic, untreated physical pain.

Hamlin’s experience cuts across all of these layers. She reported:

• Chronic severe pelvic pain and menstrual symptoms
• Seizures worsening around her period
• Substance dependence (Xanax), accidental overdose
• Multiple infections or immune-related diagnoses (Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr virus, encephalitis, PANDAS)

Even if not all of these conditions are causally linked, the pattern is familiar to specialists who work with complex chronic illness: multiple overlapping diagnoses, fragmented care, and a patient forced to become the chief investigator of their own case. Her comment that she had to “do a lot of research” herself is not an anomaly; it’s practically the unofficial motto of the chronic illness community.

Self-advocacy, social media, and why Halsey matters in this story

One of the more revealing moments is when Hamlin says the first time she heard the word “endometriosis” was not in a doctor’s office, but on Halsey’s Instagram.

That detail speaks to a larger shift: for a growing number of young women, social media has become a parallel health information system. When mainstream medicine is slow to recognize or validate their symptoms, they turn to TikTok, Instagram, and podcasts. They find communities of people with similar stories, shared vocabulary (“endo”, “PCOS”, “flare”), and practical advice on self-advocacy.

This has two sides:

• Empowering: Patients learn words to describe what they’re experiencing, discover conditions they were never told about, and pick up strategies to push for imaging, referrals, or second opinions.
• Risky: These same spaces can spread misinformation, oversimplify complex conditions, and encourage self-diagnosis without proper evaluation.

Hamlin’s story sits in the middle of that tension. She correctly recognized that something serious was being missed. Exposure to another celebrity’s endometriosis journey planted a seed. But it still took years, multiple providers, and surgery before the underlying condition was addressed.

Expert perspectives: How medicine sees cases like Hamlin’s

Specialists who work with endometriosis and menstrual-related neurological symptoms say her experience aligns with what they see in clinic — particularly for young women, celebrities or not.

“When a young woman presents with debilitating menstrual pain, mood changes, and episodic neurological symptoms like fainting or seizures, the first step is to assume the symptoms are real and potentially linked, not to segment them into separate, unrelated buckets,” said Dr. Katherine Wu, a reproductive endocrinologist and endometriosis specialist at a major academic medical center. “We now know endometriosis is not just a ‘pelvic’ condition; it’s a systemic inflammatory disease that can intersect with neurology and mental health in meaningful ways.”

Neurologists emphasize that catamenial epilepsy and seizure-like episodes around menstruation are well documented but under-discussed.

“Our textbooks describe catamenial patterns, but in practice, many patients tell us they had to be the ones to connect their seizures to their cycle,” noted Dr. Miguel Alvarez, a neurologist specializing in women’s brain health. “A coordinated gynecology–neurology approach could have shortened the diagnostic journey for cases like this.”

Mental health experts, meanwhile, point to the feedback loop between chronic pain and psychiatric symptoms.

“If you’re in severe, poorly explained pain every month, over years, you’re at dramatically higher risk for anxiety, depression, and ultimately substance misuse,” said Dr. Larissa Chen, a psychiatrist who works with patients experiencing chronic illness. “In that sense, Hamlin’s Xanax dependence and overdose don’t look like moral failure; they look like a predictable outcome of an untreated underlying disease.”

Data & evidence: The structural failures behind one personal story

A few key data points put Hamlin’s experience in context:

• Diagnostic delay: Multiple studies across Europe, North America, and Australia put the average delay to endometriosis diagnosis between 7–10 years, with younger patients often waiting longer.
• Economic impact: Endometriosis is estimated to cost billions annually in lost productivity and healthcare, comparable to conditions like diabetes, yet it receives far less research funding.
• Mental health link: Women with endometriosis have significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety. Some studies suggest up to 50% may experience clinically significant depressive symptoms.
• Substance use: Although data are still emerging, chronic pain conditions are associated with increased risk of prescription drug misuse, especially benzodiazepines and opioids.

Hamlin’s additional diagnoses — Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr virus, encephalitis, and PANDAS — point to another underappreciated reality: once someone is in the healthcare system with complex, overlapping symptoms, they often accumulate multiple labels. Some may be fully confirmed, others provisional, still others controversial. For the patient, the effect is the same: they are often treated as “complicated,” which can either prompt better care or, more often, lead to quiet avoidance by overburdened providers.

Looking ahead: What Hamlin’s case signals about the future of women’s health

There are several broader implications to watch:

1. Growing pressure for earlier, more accurate diagnosis.
   As more public figures like Hamlin speak openly about endometriosis and menstrual-related disorders, medical organizations face increasing pressure to update guidelines, improve training in recognizing severe menstrual pain, and integrate menstrual history into neurological and psychiatric assessments.
2. Integration of care across specialties.
   Hamlin’s seizures, pelvic pain, and mental health struggles all intensified around her period. Future models of care — especially in large health systems — are likely to move toward coordinated women’s health centers that combine gynecology, neurology, pain medicine, and psychiatry.
3. Patient-driven research and advocacy.
   From endometriosis to long COVID, the past decade has seen patients push the medical establishment to recognize patterns they’ve long seen in their own bodies. Celebrities add visibility and media amplification; the risk is that non-celebrities, without the same resources or platforms, remain stuck in diagnostic limbo.
4. Reframing substance use in the context of chronic illness.
   Hamlin’s decision to get sober was driven largely by fear of seizures. But her pathway into dependence — via attempts to manage unbearable symptoms and mental distress — is a reminder that addiction policy and chronic illness care cannot be separated.

From a policy perspective, her story reinforces calls for substantially more funding for endometriosis research, better insurance coverage for minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery (which remains the gold standard for diagnosis and treatment), and mandatory training for primary care and gynecology residents on recognizing severe menstrual pain as a red flag, not a rite of passage.

What’s being overlooked in mainstream coverage

Most entertainment-focused coverage of Hamlin’s revelation emphasizes resilience, celebrity family dynamics, and personal recovery — understandable angles, but incomplete. Several deeper questions often go unasked:

• Why did multiple gynecologists not even mention endometriosis despite textbook symptoms?
• Was there coordinated care among her providers, or did each specialist treat her as a separate case?
• How many non-celebrity patients with similar patterns never get the laparoscopy, never find the right surgeon, and instead cycle through emergency rooms, psychiatric meds, and stigma?
• What obligations do medical institutions have to proactively educate young women about endometriosis in adolescence, not after a decade of suffering?

Hamlin’s own comment — “no one’s figuring out the root cause” — is an indictment of a system that too often manages symptoms piecemeal instead of asking why a 20-something is having seizures, panic attacks, and debilitating pain every month in the first place.

The bottom line

Delilah Hamlin’s story is not just about a celebrity finally getting a diagnosis. It is about a medical culture that still treats women’s reproductive pain as marginal, a fragmented system that struggles with complex, multi-system illness, and a generation of young women who are learning the language of their conditions from Instagram because they didn’t hear it in their doctor’s office.

Her recovery after endometriosis surgery — including relief from seizures that had derailed her education, sobriety, and career — underscores how transformative the right diagnosis can be. It also raises a sobering question: how many women are still out there, misdiagnosed with “just anxiety” or “bad periods,” who might be living very different lives if someone connected the dots sooner?