Course Description:

This course will survey theoretical and service delivery issues related to women and mental health. Particular issues to be addressed include sexism, heterosexism, and racism in the social construction of madness, issues of diagnosis and psychopathology, psychological effects of traumatic life events, women's particular treatment needs, as well as traditional and feminist approaches to psychotherapy with women.

Women have been diagnosed, treated, committed to institutions (or burned at the stake) for symptoms of madness. For the most part, those holding the power to label, treat, and commit have been middle/upper class, heterosexual males of European descent. The feminist movement and feminist psychology and psychotherapy struggle to develop a feminist understanding of women who does not conform unquestioningly to societal standards of sanity.

This course will focus on the historical and cultural factors and behaviors that have been associated with madness in women as well as on culturally appropriate forms of finding sanity and women's efforts to make sense of female experiences.

Texts:

- Astbury, J. (1996). Crazy for you: The making of women’s madness. N.Y.: Oxford University Press. - Espin, O.M. (1997). Latina realities: Essays on healing, migration and sexuality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. - WS 522 Reader (Available at KB Books).

Additional suggested reading:

- Brown, L.S. & Ballou, M. (Eds.)(1992). Personality & psychopathology: Feminist reappraisals. NJ: Guilford.

- Jack, D.C. (1991) Silencing the self: Women and depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

- Showalter, E. (1985) The female malady. NY: Penguin Books

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