Mental health and the patriarchy.

[poshsinglemum]

To what extent does the patriarchy contribute to the poor mental health of both men and women? I am thinking along the lines of men ''unable'' to express their emotions due to rigid gender stereotypes and women taking valium when staying at home to look after the kids. I know that these are stereotypes in themselves but please tell me your insights!

It has been well documented that Sylvia Plath was chronically depressed due to Ted Hughes infidelity. Is this patriarchy or simply human nature?
Virginia Woolf had a distrust of the psychiatriactric profession marking it out as a male dominated/patriarchal system even though she had major mentalhealth issues.

Do you think that woemn are seen as ''hysterical or mad'' under a patriarchal system as it seeks to repress the emotional side of life.

Also; why does patriarchy dismiss emotions when they are such an important part of everyday existence? Is it not possible to be both rational AND emotional? Does it serve to justify the staus quo and capitalist alienation from nature? Phew!

I know that there is so much more to us than how men treat us but I was wondering if the strusture of our society i.e; patriarchal is resposible for some mental health problems in women.

Thanks Sylvia

Dittany I find your last post fairly passive aggressive, and petty. For someone who is so vociferous against this kind of behaviour in the male I'm surprised you would resort to this.

I write DSH as an abbreviation for deliberate self harm. I'm not trivialising it or dehumanising it. To say I'm not interested in the young women I meet as people is insulting. I've worked with damaged individuals female and male for 12 years. i wrote my MSc dissertation on deliberate self harm in young women. I hate the fact that women with a borderline personality disorder get such a raw deal in mental health services. I work with the cases other professionals shy away from.

And although i may not agree with some psychoanalytic theory and methods your comment about male psychotherapists is a gross generalisation. Maybe true in the 60s and 70s unfortunately. Not so much today in the modern NHS

Vezzie: INteresting post. I'm an apocalyptic snorer and have been banished from some partners' beds for that reason (or absented myself).

It's called being professional, not unboundaried, overinvolved and dangerous. I didn't want to write a big speil so i kept it succinct and to the point.

You are deliberately ignoring a lot of my posts. I am not going to reiterate what i've said about the links I know are there between self harm and previous sexual abuse. Of course it exists i've already said that, but not every single time in every single case.

I've seen first hand the horrible emptiness and desecration of self that sexual abuse causes in women. I've also seen the same awful emptiness in women who've not been sexually abused, although for some reason have not had their essential requirements for healthy emotional development met for a variety of reasons.

Sorry poshsinglemum don't want to take over your thread.

there is no doubt to my mind that pre existing sexist attitude in the provision of mental health care to women has been abusive and damaging to them. Other maligned and discriminated groups have also feared less well. Black men for example have a far higher rate of schizophrenia diagnosis than any other group.

As for wider society I'm not sure, historically yes, but these days i do think it's more complex.

I don't think their problem is necessarily their mother, but experience over the years has revealed that lack of emotional validation early on can contribute to interpersonal problems. It could be their Dad, granny whoever! We try to help the familes as a whole you know, we certanly don't blame them. put it this way, there's usually a toxic relationship somewhere along the line. I don't dig for it though purposefully. Disclosure happens as part of a decent therapeutic relationship.

Sometime there's no clear trigger and people are still struggling, it's a mystery to them as much as to me.

A lot of the time their mums have a diagnosis of post natal depression, or bi-polar disorder. they have not been able to validate their babies emotions. Not every time, but quite a bit of the time. In some cases the main validating carer has been their dad. That's my clinical experience. Of course, unfortunately some of the women have been abused, but certainly not all.

I talked about blame as in the concept of self blame. Young women who self harm often experience self blame guilt and shame. Therapy is to try to stop them blaming themselves for what's happened to them. It's not about abdicating blame from whoever has abused them, not at all. their anger towards whoever has abused them or not met their needs is a very valid emotion.

Apologies I didn't explain myself clearly, I'm talking about families where one parent may be mentally ill and may have been invalidating and inconsistent. We try to help with the communication, whilst at the same time validating the pesrons very real and understandable anger. most of these young people want to have a relationship with their parents, even if they can remember emotional abuse/neglect from a parent, even if it's still going on.

Clear sexual or physical abuse or emotional/psychological cruelty is different. Even in these cases though the person may want to still have a relationship with their parent.

Obviously if the young person wanted nothing to do with their parent(s)/families we would support them with that too.

And please I'm not for one minute saying that women with mental illness can't be effective mothers. Of course they can, and are every day. A diagnosis does not mean a child with mental health problems.

I had quite extensive NHS psychodynamic therapy, from a male therapist who was empathetic and humane. He asked me about the possibility of sexual abuse (I haven't been sexually abused) only when material came up that made the question a relevant one. If I had been asked about it as a matter of routine I think I would have found that alienating and, what is the word, unvalidating, because it would have been based on preconception or generalisation and not on an observation of me.

The therapy I had was not Freudian of course, but it owed a lot to Freud, and post-Freudians in terms of its structure and its conceptions of some of the structural features of the human mind. It certainly didn't hang on to outmoded ideas of penis envy or Oedipal/Electra complexes. It was valuable, very.

Minx you sound very humane and balanced in your approach.

That's interesting Eleison I'm lad it was helpful. You've articulated it well. i don't do psychodynamic psychotherapy but there are core therapeutic principles that span all therapies.To directly ask about sexual abuse in the assessment stage before the therapeutic relationship is properly formed, and safe, would be intrusive and for some an assault in itself.

the person needs to be ready to disclose. people need to be ready to talk about it. And they need to have a robust therapeutic relationship to keep them safe afterwards, disclosure, whilst a relief can be pretty traumatic for people.

I'm not going to get involved in your other thread dittany sorry. Asking women who've chosen to partake in an anonymous discussion about a pertinent issue on an internet forum is so so so far removed from what i'm talking about I'm not going there. Not saying it isn't valuable or useful, but it's not in the same arena.

I'll leave you to do your own research on threapeutic relationships, may be then you can form a balanced opinion. I doubt from your comments any explanation i give would be taken seriously or given any consideration. To call therapeutic relationships "magical thinking" implies a level of ignorance I wasn't expecting.

I'm allowed my own opinion about sylvia plath from all the information there is about her. After all you've formed an opinion about me from a few sentences haven't you? She had major depression, I don't think Hughes caused her suicide ultimately, I suspect eventually she would have done it anyway.

I'm sorry your experience of therapy wasn't good. I'm sorry that it's led you to be so scathing of it. Brandishing all psychotherapists as those who expect sex with their patients is very very wrong.

Attacking me for the language i use is bullying . I'm sorry i didn't say it "right". I've had experiences too, psychologically damaging from men and women.

I'm not going to say any more as i'm tired. All i will say is I find you a bit of a bully dittany. I respect your views and knowledege of feminism, I find that quite impressive. but your approach to arguments is aggressive, and innaccuarate.

And do you know what? there's more to the world than your feminist perspective, your approach can make women like me scared to be feminist, may be have a think about that.

vezzie - that is an interesting point about sleep deprivation

I sometimes wonder about the intensity of opposition to sleep training techniques, e.g. controlled crying, an opposition which is not based on any evidence. It is mothers who tend to have shoulder the burden of the night-wakings, and there is also a taboo around co-sleeping, which means you are not sleeping alone with your man.

OP "Is it not possible to be both rational AND emotional? "

I never realised how these are used as though they are antonyms, when they are not. IIRC, it is difficult to make rational decisions if the emotional part of our brains is damaged. I think that one of the symptoms of PTSD is also a difficulty in making decisions.

Maybe, outside of wartime, women are more likely to suffer PTSD, especially post natally, but also as victims of abuse?

"Does it serve to justify the status quo and capitalist alienation from nature?"

Perhaps that goes back to Vezzie's point about the nuclear family. Women who struggle are given therapy and meds. The status quo is not challenged. We live in isolated units and don't have time for nature, or for each other.

X lots and lots of posts there