Women's mental health narratives with Jessica Good

Hysterical - that was an actual medical diagnosis used to describe women experiencing any type of mental health condition. Looking at women’s mental health through that bianary - the happy woman with no opinions or the insane, wild woman - has been the hallmark of how women’s mental health has been portrayed in film and television since the beginning. This reductive dismissal by the media of the spectrum of women’s mental health needs and experiences has led women to believe that in order to be “normal” they had to be unemotional, and programmed men to believe that any woman who expressed their feelings must be “crazy.” In this episode, we speak with with Jessica Good about where those narratives originated, why they have persisted and the deprogramming work that is being done to change them.