All in Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women’s Mental Health

Misogyny takes a heavy toll on women’s mental well-being and results in inferior medical care, according to this incisive debut inquiry. Tracing the history of hysteria, health researcher Pratt argues that 18th-century physicians regarded women diagnosed with the disorder as “wanting in character, strength, courage, or gumption to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and get on with things.” Such bias continues into the present, Pratt contends, discussing how her grandmother was diagnosed with conversion disorder around the time it replaced hysteria in psychiatric usage in 1980, despite the fact the diagnosis couldn’t explain her grandmother’s “garbled speech, delirium, and tremors.” The “constant threat of sexual violence” affects women’s brains, Pratt posits, noting research showing that the frequency with which women have their stress response activated depletes their energy levels and reduces their “concentration, attention, rational problem-solving, [and] immune response.” Elsewhere, Pratt discusses her ambivalent relationship with antidepressants and suggests that though some women may find them helpful, the drugs shouldn’t be used to recast as chemical imbalances the social forces (“patriarchy and capitalism”) that may lie at the root of one’s symptoms. Artfully weaving personal anecdotes into her probing analysis, Pratt demonstrates how broad social and historical forces converge on the individual. It’s a troubling assessment of sexism’s persistent harms. (May)