Mad, Bad And Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present

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It looks across two centuries of a growing group of professionals of mind doctors: alienists, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists; neurologists, pathologists, neuroscientists, psychopharmacologists. However, he was still baffled about the reasons for his behaviour and announced that he would immediately seek therapy. This is currently under review; drafts have been issued by the APA taskforce and the final DSM-5 is expected in 2013. The writing is full of verve; it’s like a stallion running through the British Library reading rooms!

She spends more time discussing the doctors and their backgrounds than actually discussing the women. This book might have gotten there, but I couldn't get my brain where it needed to be to really sit down with the material and read. Taking responsibility for your own health and wellness means every part, not just numbers that come from blood tests.I really felt it was a trudge to get through it and for little enjoyment in comparison to the time it took me to read it. As many as one in five American children is taking Ritalin and prescriptions in Britain have doubled in five years (Daily Mail, 13/6/11) despite the lack of any satisfactory medical test for ADHD. I would like to revisit this book eventually, as perhaps my rating and thoughts aren't representative of the author's arguments. It is a fairly unchallenging book, easy to read and understand, even though going through 500 pages was tough and my slow progression through it almost drove me mad, bad and sad (eheh, can't avoid inserting a pun).

This paper will reveal how cultural beliefs and superstitions associated with the female body, as communicated by the medical profession, had a profound impact on the image of the mad or violent women in nineteenth-century texts.I also know, as much as I hate to depend on a chalky tablet no bigger than my fingernail that my life is vastly improved because someone started with Prozac. I'm not sure this is her intention, but she almost seems to be saying that a kind of glamorisation of victimisation has taken hold with the later cases, a position with which I felt very uncomfortable. Appignanesi seems more interested in the therapists, male and female, than the patients, none of whom get much of a look-in, despite being the ostensible subject of the book. She claims that anorexia results in twelve times more deaths in the 18-25 year old female population than any other single cause, which is complete baloney. Sigmund Freud’s famous question was originally put to Princess Marie Bonaparte, patient, friend and analyst, the moving force behind Freud’s flight from Nazi Vienna to his final home in London, now the Freud Museum.