What Do Psychiatrists Think of Women?

     Not much, it seems.

     For years women were not even used as subjects in clinical trials for new psychiatric drugs because their monthly periods might have skewed their results compared to male subjects. The FDA had issued a 1977 guideline that barred women of reproductive potential from participating in early-phase clinical trials. Finally, in 1993, the National Institute of Health Revitalization Act required the inclusion of women in any NIH research.

     Male bodies had been the “norm.” Women’s were not. Psychiatry had reworked mental illness to be seen as a medical, not a psychological problem, in order to raise psychiatrists to the authority and prestige level of medical doctors…and above the popular moniker of “quack” which had become so prevalent during the nineteen-fifties.

     The use of “hysteria” – the Greek word for uterus — had been dropped from the DSM in 1980, but was replaced with “histrionic disorder.” Both terms, of course, described female, not male, conditions. Finally, in 2013, “premenstrual dysphoric disorder” was added to the DSM as a mental disorder…also unique to women, of course.

     Two thirds of all psychiatrists are men. Male psychiatrists also comprise most of the higher authority roles in the field. Only 22 percent of college psychiatry department chairs, for instance, are women – half of what it should be proportionately.

     More than three-quarters of the psychiatrists who prescribe and perform electroshock therapy are male, but two-thirds of the patients who receive electroshock therapy are women. A 1994 study showed that women are three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs than men for the exact same symptoms.

     It is estimated that in America male psychiatrists have sexually abused 150,000 of their female patients. 21,000 of these women have tried to commit suicide. 16,000 of them have ended up hospitalized because of the sexual violation by a male psychiatrist. 21,000 of them have tried to commit suicide. 1500 have succeeded. 

     What psychiatrist came up with the bright idea to run 460 volts through a human brain as a “therapy”? A male psychiatrist. What psychiatrist came up with the bright idea to lobotomize a patent – like Rose Kennedy – and physically remove part of her brain as a therapy? A male psychiatrist.

     Which gender is the one most damaged by these vicious practices?

     Ladies, it’s you.

     So…what do psychiatrists think of women?