Illness and Power: Women's Mental Disorders and the Battle Between the Sexes - Hardcover

Wenegrat, Brant

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814792820 ISBN 13: 9780814792827

Publisher: NYU Press, 1995

Synopsis

Since ancient times, physicians have believed that women are especially vulnerable to certain mental illnesses. Contemporary research confirms that women are indeed more susceptible than men to anxiety, depression, multiple personality, and eating disorders, and several forms of what used to be called hysteria.

Why are these disorders more prevalent in women? Brant Wenegrat convincingly asserts that women's excess risk stems from a lack of social power. He reviews women's social power from an evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective and places mental disorders in the context of evolution and societal organization. In this comprehensive look at mental disorders commonly associated with women, Brant Wenegrat convincingly asserts that women's excess risk stems from a lack of social power.

About this title

Review:

"Provocative . . . . Chock full of interesting, colorful anecdotes and observations. Wenegrat is one of the few psychiatrists who has dared to apply evolutionary thinking to everyday clinical practice."

-Judith Eve Lipton, M.D.

"An important book...treats alternative explanations for women's mental disorders with crisp, critical insight, culling out the wrongheaded and embracing valid points of view where they exist."

-Linda Garfield, Stanford University Medical Center

Synopsis:

Wenegrat (psychiatry, Stanford U. School of Medicine) argues that women's lack of social power, as defined as the ability to provide for one's needs and security and to make decisions based on one's own desires, is to blame for their excess risk for certain mental disorders such as anxiety, depress

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0814792820
• ISBN 13: 9780814792827
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 226