To think psychiatry is misogynistic?

[tvde]

I have been reading works of feminist psychologists such as Jess Taylor and critical works of people such as Joanna moncrieff.

the argument is:

• Trauma responses to abuse are normal, rational, and proportionate to what someone has experienced.
• What is often labelled as “mental illness” can actually be understandable reactions to violence and oppression.
• The mental health system has a history of pathologising women’s responses, especially after abuse, instead of addressing the trauma itself.
• This can become a form of victim blaming, where women are judged for their reactions (e.g. being “too emotional,” “unstable,” or “making bad choices”).
• These patterns are shaped by broader systems like patriarchy and racism, which influence how people are diagnosed and treated.
• Common narratives shift responsibility away from perpetrators and subtly place it on victims (e.g. questioning behaviour, choices, or credibility).
• Widespread rape myths reinforce this—such as believing it’s not “real” rape without physical resistance or injuries, or that men “didn’t mean to.”
• theyre given drugs which don’t actually have good success rates (see moncrieff)

I see this countless times working with women and child victims.
Have you experienced this to?

This. All the thoughts of what could have gone wrong, all the stress of caring for a new baby. I fell asleep breast feeding once and was traumatised by the idea I could have killed my baby.
trauma doesn’t have to be bombs or abuse

I think even people in psychology acknowledge that psychology has a history of misogyny. Both in the way women have been treated and the erasure of women’s achievements. There is a parallel with medicine where women’s pain is not treated with as much care as men’s.

Do you think the case of Melanie Gill (the self-proclaimed “psychologist” who was doing expert witness work) is also okay on these grounds?

@tvde

I did get PND after baby number 2. Consciously I thought I was okay. Dealing with it all just fine. Thriving infact.

It is only really on reflection I can truly understand how traumatising it all was. I was 23, not much support. Run ragged with my toddler. No sleep.

I am someone who doesn’t consciously experience depression, it comes out somatically. I will present with a physical illness. For example, severe joint pain.

Generally I am stable. For the past week I’ve had back pain and I’m like ahhh okay, I’m depressed.

Once i acknowledge this, take the necessary self care steps and change current life circumstances, the physical pain disappears.

I just do not express it in the normal way.

I don’t know who she is so I’ll look her up.

with Jess Taylor it’s a hard one isn’t it? Because it’s all about protected titles, confidentiality and monetising vulnerable people. But equally there’s clearly a demand for what she’s saying and it’s resonating with some people. If people want to spend their money and seek alternative opinions and she’s not lying about what she can offer, is that a her problem or a law problem?

i don’t agree with sharing abuse victims stories without their consent but this happens all the time. Did the little girl in the newspaper consent to her story being shared?

Psychiatry is a joke.

I’ve been (I believe) misdiagnosed with personality disorder. The treatment you receive when you get that diagnosis is beyond shocking. Treated as a nuisance. I’ve been called attention seeking and hysterical. Been told I’m too demanding. Been refused medication that worked. When I was really unwell I was taking knives to bed. Threatening to kill people, self harming daily. I stuck pictures all over my window of faces to “practise learning who was evil”. I made a dummy and stabbed it multiple times. I filled notebooks and stuck notes round the house which said things lie “trust nobody”, “kill all evil”, “follow the saviour”.
My family were told that as I had not harmed anyone so far then I wasn’t a risk. BUT the MH team wouldn’t visit me at home yet left me with my family who I was threatening.

In desperation, I started taking antipsychotics again that they said I didn’t need. I feel like a different person. I don’t hear the voices now or have angels visit me telling me to kill people. I can drive safely. I can sleep without being woken by voices, read books, go out.

I was too scared to leave the house as the voices told me to kill people. This weekend I even went to the cinema with my daughter.

That is awful and yes that sounds like a lot more than a personality disorder and I think you should take someone with you from PALs and keep going back until you get the correct medication for you

I’ve just been talking to a friend recently about the hypothesis that young anorexic girls trying to stay like children so they can be cared for without having to take adult responsibility.

These are girls in eating disorders clinics who have eating disorders as a response to abuse in their families .

This feels ‘misogynistic’ and shaming to me.

I can’t even get an appointment with them, the psychiatrists gave discharged me.

But I bet if I was a man and I bet if I was a different race (ie non white) then I would have been in a psych hospital before you know it.

Im really sorry, i dont know if anyone who works in adult services can advise you on next steps maybe? This sounds horrible.

id struggle to take Jess Taylor seriously because she clearly vehemently hates men. I’d rather take the opinion of a person with more balanced views.

@voltana

she never used to hate men when she had a husband and was working for a men’s MH charity lol. She did change her tune though 😂.

Where did you read this? This is awful and I will ask for the post to be removed if this is true?

The book that changed my life

Isn’t Jess Taylor a total hack?

But she is a woman and a feminist,so i consider her opinions to be worthy of consideration. Many of the male theorists from the past who are still taken seriously were even less qualified than her - being men and definitely not feminists.

I was told to be quiet when i was in labour, apparently i was "scaring the other women". I was in labour for 24 hours, was shunted from hospital to hospital in an ambulance, was denied an epidural and ended up having a forceps delivery. I had a midwife visiting me who had never had children, and i struggled to breast feed, ending up with bleeding nipples,because we were told we "ought" to breast feed. And yet people, including my g. P were surprised when i had post natal depression and had panic attacks for years after. If that isn't a story of misogyny i don't know what is.

She doesn't fight for them, she is a narcissist who exploits them for her own personal gain.

None of her ideas are original and certainly she's not a force for good.

I had the displeasure of knowing her fairly well in real life, I was taking in by her bullshit for a while. But trust me, it really is bullshit. That woman is a grifter, a bully and a compulsive liar. She doesn't have an ethical bone in her body.

I have a feeling Mumsnet doesn't allow links to this website, but if you google Tattle Life and her name, you'll find a long running set of threads there including testamony from several people who know her personally on what goes on behind the facade.

Oh good god I went on there once about the naked doula. Really got taken in by it. Confronted her and found her to be a lovely woman going through a really hard time. I don’t like that website but ahree that anyone who wants to be famous is probably a narcissist

I'm not particularly keen on Tattle Life either, but as Jess aggressively goes after anyone who criticises her, it's one of the few places you can actually read what her critics are saying. Most of it isn't the usual Tattle Life posters - a lot of it is from people who know or knew her, finding a place to voice their concerns.

A typical Jessica tactic, for example, is calling the police and telling lies about her critics in an effort to intimidate them into silence.

Any claim she makes online should be taken with a massive pinch of salt, she lies constantly.

Would she not get done for wasting police time if she really was doing this? Or harassment and intimidation?

i have seen how agressively she protests about that website. That woman definitely does not want people talking about her and she doesn’t want people reading it. Why that is I don’t know. 🤷‍♀️ having a narcissistic ex myself, I can say I believe you unfortunately

I expect it'll catch up with her one day and she'll have to answer to the police, yes.

But, she definitely does do this. I can think of several occasions when she's done this to different people and I expect there are more I don't know about as it's a tactic she uses time and again.

It's surprising what you can get away with, with a lot of front and some charm, however. And if you don't always use the same police force for your complaint. They're not that joined up.

Also, she has contracts with the police - or used to at least, she used to provide training for them - and she's full of self-confidence, so I expect she's relatively convincing when she's making the complaints.

She tried to use the police to intimidate a vulnerable woman called Sally Ann into silence, for example. In a nutshell, Jessica published Sally Ann's own story of CSA in one of her books without permission. When Sally Ann made this public, what Jessica should have done was to apologise, say it was an honest mistake and promise to remove the story from further editions.

Instead, Jessica went on the attack, aiming to trash Sally Ann's reputation. She told anyone who would listen that Sally Ann was obsessed with her, was being innfluenced by her support service who "had it in for Jessica" (funny the amount of people who supposedly have it in for her, she's always the hero-victim in her stories!), that her story wasn't in the book, that Sally Ann was a stalker. Then - utterly shamelessly, the story changed, she said actually the story was in the book, it was a misunderstanding, but still, Sally Ann was a stalker.

It was pure DARVO - trying to cast Sally Ann as a crazy nutter rather than admit her own shortcomings - the exact methods she attacks abusive men for. But this woman has zero morals.

Jessica called the police on Sally Ann multiple times, even though she knew Sally Ann was incredibly vulnerable.

It ended up in court. Throughout, Jessica misrepresented what was happening, claimed that Sally Ann had been found guilty of stalking, when she absolutely wasn't. The reality is, when push came to shove, Sally Ann had a tonne of evidence supporting her case and good character while Jessica couldn't produce any and the case was dropped. But it was one of those things where the process is the punishment.

A lot of the detail of this is on Tattle Life.

Thankfully I'm no longer anywhere near Jessica's life and so I don't know, it's possible she has been pulled up for her habit of wasting police time and using them to intimidate people. I certainly hope so.

Thank you I’ve just been on tattle and all I can find are accusations of her using a suicide to target the website and discussions of her writing technique.

this sounds awful. She describes in her own book people using her own mental health against her, so hearing her do it to another vulnerable woman is very upsetting, especially using such dangerous and common offensive tropes (obsessive psycho vs professional). I’m glad sally ann was vindicated and sorry she didn’t get justice for the defamation.

i think from an academic point of view, what she’s done is make a phenomen accessible and easy to discuss, which we’ve managed to do here. It’s a shame she has such a controversial personal life as this again distracts from the victims who’s voices she is supposedly championing.

The prefix "hystero" simply means womb or uterus. Hysterectomy therefore means removal of that body part.

The words hysterical and hysteria obviously have the same linguistic root, so yes, there's mysogynistic reasons behind them.

(Sorry if someone's already said that.)