What is the connection between feminism and mental health treatment.?

Question

The mentally ill are no longer as stigmatized as they once were. Did early feminism have any influence in the evolution of mental health treatment? I read something in Feminine Mystique in relation to this but can't remember it in detail. Links, or sources will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Feminists need terminal mental health treatment.

Answer 2

In history only men were Doctor's and health worker's becasue women were not allowed an education.

The fact is, there was never any focus on root cause analysis in terms of what caused certain behaviours and comong up with prevention strategies!

It was easier and more convenient to stick a bandaid on it by prescribing valium (which simply created worse problems for many), or stick people a psych institution for being a public inconvenience. this shows a complete lack of understanding of medical conditions!

Medicine and population health has come along way....

Answer 3

Feminists have criticized certain elements of mental health treatment, i.e. copious amounts of Valium for housewives, the "rest cure," and some dubious additions to the DSM.

Answer 4

The feminist politicisation of medicine and mental health does patients no good. Feminists with no background in psychology or psychiatry have been critical of over-diagnosing some conditions in women e.g. depression, but what are psychiatrists supposed to do - ignore depressed women because its politically incorrect?  Valium was a standard treatment for depressed men and women at one time, and the fact that more women were depressed and therefore taking this drug is not a case for 'misogyny by diagnosis'.

Other examples include the medical establishment - a pawn of The Patriarchy - creating conditions like PMS in order to make women seem mentally unsound, and using terms like 'hysteria' ('hyster' meaning 'womb') to imply that women were unstable because of their reproductive organs.

Note that feminists are very fond of saying that testosterone causes men to be inherently unstable (violent and abusive) but somehow when it comes to female hormones causing mental imbalance the same doesn't apply. However you don't see feminists complaining when a woman gets a reduced sentence for murder because of diminished responsibility due to PMS.

Answer 5

Feminism invented conditions, like doodlebugjim said, to justify the violent behaviour of women. Can you imagine a man claiming he 'had high testosterone', so he wasn't violent by choice and getting a lesser sentence? No. Or if he claimed he was abused? The judge would increase his sentence laughing. Doesn't matter if it's the truth, all he has to do is open is mouth. The man is always a liar, trying in vain to defend himself for a heinous crime for which he was obviously guilty since his name was first recorded.

Yet a woman can even get aquitted for murder for using the always-questionable PMS and Battered Woman Syndrome. If she murders someone, she was abused, and due to the BWS... Doesn't matter if it's a lie, all she has to do is act and open her mouth. Take Andrea Yates and Mary Winkler for example. They got away with murder of children and spouses because they claimed to be abused. Those claims were never verified. The woman is always right, and what is she doing in a courtroom, and why was her name registered in the first place? Release he with honour and a box of sweets.

These 'conditions' were invented by feminists simply to feed the legal system BS that if men commit crimes, they need punishment, and if women commit crimes, they need help. Incredibly, people bought it, and are still refusing to believe it could be otherwise.

What's the connection between mental health treatment and feminism you ask? Feminists need it. Seriously. They claim to be as good at Math and Science as men (that's what led to quotas and programmes for women in science and math courses). Well, they showed their prowess with Math with the wage gap, and their prowess with science with these 'conditions'. Either women are hugely incompetent in these fields, or feminists lack the sanity to use science and math properly. I agree with the latter.

Feminists are influencing anything and everything with their lies. This has to change.

Answer 6

Honestly the only thing i can think of within early feminist discourse is what Rio already mentioned, and the stance they took against treating socially inconvinenient women as crazy.

Answer 7

There were many cases of women being committed to asylums because they had fallen pregnant, or displayed sexuality overtly, to the embarrassment of their families.

Feminism helped to bring a recognition that women were not merely chattel to be disposed of in favorable marriages, nor were they simply passive recipients of sexuality.

So committing women to asylums is a practice which has now, thankfully come to an end.

Feminism has also, as Rio mentioned, called into question the manner in which depression is treated in women.  Time was that Lithium and Valium were very widely prescribed to treat depression, and it was seen as quite normal that women would need these drugs.  Pharmaceuticals have come forward a long way, but doctors these days are generally much slower to turn to chemical solutions, preferring counseling as a first option.