I have struggled with cyclical depression my entire life. I know I have had mental health professionals shoe horn me into a “traditional” female mental health narrative, which means I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar and with Borderline Personality Disorder, conditions applied mostly to women and lots of them who are not suffering from the condition. It’s a passive, non-malicious misogyny, but it still is misogyny when a person who has deep depression and a flat affect is declared hysterical and in need of lots of meds to control her out of control emotions. It took many years and lots of reading for me to understand the horrible diagnoses I have received.

So if I can be put into those boxes while being no more than an anxious and occasionally deeply depressed woman, it’s easy to see how a narrative of female mental illness dogs the profession to this day.

I almost hate the idea that anyone would read this book but from the perspective you intend to interrogate it if you do, I bet you’d find a lot to work with.