Photo by Rose Cohen ’22
The Pattie J. Groves Health Center at Mount Holyoke College also hosts counseling services, available to students as health care options.
At one point, hysteria was seen as a major mental issue, based on the theories of sexist of practitioners. The term means “wandering uterus.” Instead of finding counsel in a doctor, women’s feelings were pathologized: chalked up to unruly feminine emotions rather than natural coping through grief or tribulations. How do practitioners avoid affecting their clients with bias? Though standardized diagnostic criteria have their own problems, they are the best way to avoid implicit bias in treatment.
Every once in a while, I hear concerns that biological testing for mental illness undermines the emotional struggles of those who live with it. There are warnings against chalking these struggles up to the disregulation of neurotransmitters (the chemicals in our brains which dictate psychological responses).
It was controversial when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) began using the medical model, a diagnostic methodology which focuses on biological factors more than social context. But does the biological perspective truly undermine these struggles, or does it provide insight into a field mired in subjectivity?
Subjectivity is inherent in clinical psychology and lends the practice its flexibility, but the future of psychiatry lies in physical testing. The neurogenetic perspective does not mechanize mental illness. It legitimizes the fight against stigma: not because there is visible proof of struggle, but because, if illnesses are perceived as physical, then empathetic approaches are more readily accessible.
What if depression were seen like a broken leg, made worse with a lack of treatment? What if neuroscientific education was made more readily available and people could understand, early on in their lives, how mental illness works? These issues should be taught in general health classes in greater detail.
There is more to the biological perspective than the fight against stigma, or how mental illness is perceived by the public. The neurogenetic perspective, or the perspective that focuses on the intersection between brain function and gene expression, offers an avenue for psychiatrists and psychologists to avoid the more problematic areas of subjectivity. When the practitioner exercises power over the client, or makes them believe that their thinking is abnormal or the product of poor character, subjectivity becomes problematic.
Hysteria is the most infamous example of subjectivity and it interfered with the well-being of patients, specifically women. The label also stigmatized natural emotional responses.
The biological perspective toward mental illness does not pathologize thinking, it only provides an alternative way of examining the brain with quickly- growing technology. Diagnosis should not be an art, and as technology improves, it should become a science based on evidence. The DSM-V was right to move in the direction of the medical model.
Diagnosis will always require skill. This is not to say that tests will replace good psychologists, or that subjectivity is not inherent in clinical counseling. But if the psychologist exercises power over their client with no constructive answers for their struggles, then the client is in danger of perceiving themselves according to the opinions of an authoritative professional.
Biological testing provides clients with a safe space to introspect, rather than a perception to take on, where they can interpret their own results and live with the neutral products of scientific investigation.
The days of the “hysteric wandering uterus” are over and they have been for a long time. Advancing technology can prevent the biases of the cultural moment from affecting the treatment of the individual client.