Women's Encounters with the Mental Health Establishment

Book excerpt: Explore women’s first-person experiences with the mental health establishment!This unique contemporary anthology of women’s experiential writing shares women’s realities, perceptions, and experiences (positive and negative) within the therapeutic environment. These artistic expressions of personal experience will help women understand their own encounters in a new light. They are also instructive and enlightening for any practitioner working with women in a mental health setting. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story (included here), The Yellow Wallpaper, which inspired this title, has come to represent the struggle of contemporary women to be understood by the therapeutic milieu from whom they seek psychological support and psychiatric treatment. An icon of feminist writing, the 1892 story symbolizes affirmation and validation for the female experience regarding mental health and therapy. This anthology, in the spirit of Gilman’s work, gives voice to today’s women so that their own encounters with the mental health establishment can be validating and affirming to others. It will also enlighten those in the helping professions as they extend their services to women in a time of growing need and shrinking resources.In addition to The Yellow Wallpaper and a foreword and afterword by noted psychiatric professionals, Women’s Encouters with the Mental Health Establishment: Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper also contains works by authors including: Sylvia Plath Kate Millett Anne Sexton Lauren Slater Martha Manning Elayne Clift and many more!Through prose and poetry, the contributors to this volume offer a creative, artistic, and highly readable contribution to the literatures of women’s studies and psychology!Visit the author’s website at http://www.sover.net/~eclift.