A critical feminist analysis of madness: Pathologising femininity through psychiatric discourse

For centuries, women have occupied a unique place in the annals of insanity. Some would say that women are more mad than men, with psychiatric treatment a beneficent force that sets out to cure the disordered female mind. This chapter offers an alternative explanation – that women are subjected to misdiagnosis and mistreatment by experts whose own pecuniary interests can be questioned, as can their use (or abuse) of power. Women in specific demographic groups – in particular, working class women, black women, older women and lesbians – are at the highest risk of over diagnosis of psychiatric problems. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) or premenstrual syndrome (PMS) stands as an example of normal female behaviour being discursively constructed as mad, resulting in women taking up a psychiatric diagnosis, with consequences for how their behaviour is subsequently judged. Changes in gender roles after the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the marginalisation of hysteria as a diagnostic category.