Tag: women and psychiatric drugs

In 1959, my mother suffered what people referred to as a nervous breakdown after my sister’s birth. I puzzled over why Mom never recovered, until I found Dad’s collection of medical records in my sister’s attic. How could anyone give a nursing mother with three small children so many drugs in such a short period of time?

Martha Rosenberg analyzes the “slick, Mad Men-style ads” that ran in medical journals from the 1950s-70s “in which women clearly ‘knew their place’ and...