across the wire

Women have been diagnosed with "mental illness" at a greater rate than men. More specifically they are diagnosed with depression, personality disorders and other 'mood' disorders a greater rate than men. There are multiple reasons and opinions as to why this occurs, and you probably have your own opinion on that - but for me what sparked this is conversation is what I believe is the medicalization of women's bodies.

I was listening to an NPR This American Life episode called "Babysitting" in which the last act of the program contains a story of a single mother and two children. Listen to it, I cannot describe well enough the complexity of the two children relating to their mother - she makes up fake appointments for herself, she tries to convince them to live in orphanages and calls her daughter a "whore" and she constantly is lying to her children. Describing those characteristics of a mother set in motion the automatic response to label her as "ill" in some way.

It was not until the middle of the story do I begin to realize the social context which this mother is living in. She is living in the 1940's with two children. Her husband dies and therefore she works and takes care of the children. She is socially isolated (they say in the story it is by her own choice, but if you listen carefully there are reasons to believe that it is the social climate causing her isolation). People have many reactions to stress and oppression - some physical and some mental. How can we place the blame and pathologize people for simply enduring their social situation?

Why is this a gender issue? Some how, some where our North American society has defined what normal emotion is. While I assume that many people would think that it is normal for women to be "emotional" and that men are normal in their emotional stoicism, yet we still try and emulate the masculine standard of feeling. Depressive moods, manic moods, personalities are all subdued under the careful eye of the physician and medication which often leave the person in a state of emotional stoicism. Women who are labeled "irrational" during their periods are given pharmaceuticals to regulate their mood, or subdue it. Now they can just "take it like a man" and suck it up - show no feelings. Is there an emotional standard we are trying to emulate? Is the prevalence of mental illness diagnosed in women a reaction to not being able to fit that mold?