Biology and mental illness: a historical perspective.

Abstract

A century ago, psychiatrists understood women's susceptibility to mental illness in terms of their unique biology. Although contemporary physicians certainly do not share late 19th-century psychiatrists' biases about women and the social order, the similarities between today's emphasis on women's biology and earlier explanations of the relationship between women's biology and mental illness bear investigation. This paper reviews the history of medical ideas about the connection between women's reproductive organs and their mental health and questions modern assumptions about that connection.