“Medicating Women’s Feelings”

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In the New York Times, Julie Holland grapples with a sense that women may be biologically more prone to experience the world more emotionally, while she resists the pathologizing of that in biomedical terms.

“Womenā€™s emotionality is a sign of health, not disease; it is a source of power,” writes Holland. “But we are under constant pressure to restrain our emotional lives. We have been taught to apologize for our tears, to suppress our anger and to fear being called hysterical. The pharmaceutical industry plays on that fear, targeting women in a barrage of advertising on daytime talk shows and in magazines.”

Medicating Womenā€™s Feelings (New York Times, February 28, 2015)

2 COMMENTS

  1. The psychiatrists are still writing articles espousing the chemical imbalance theory, while pretending that their industry is not the one responsible for the egregious over-medication of women in this country. The hypocrisy of the psychiatric profession is staggering.

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  2. Tears on a woman – hysterical, unbalanced. Tears on a guy – oh, such an emotional good man (if he happens to be a white rich guy in power of course, if not he’s a pussy).
    There are a million ways how one behaviour can be a sign of madness, emotional instability and criminality in a powerless group but totally neutral or even positive in another group.

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