When reading Broughton’s piece, there was a lot of modern media and discourse I found myself comparing the story to. I found the discovery of the causes of hysteria to be of course a good thing, and it was honestly a little sad and humorous seeing the reasoning that linked hysteria to more physical problems and less mental problems. I add the humor aspect because now, it feels so obvious that this is a mental disorder, so obvious in fact that I think it was understood secretly a lot earlier than doctors led on, which then makes it sad. The full control they now had over the women that dealt with hysteria made it, not a big deal to look into. I feel like the problems are linked so deeply into sexism, it did a 180 and even harm men that needed the mental help. I would say even today the societal standards of “real men don’t need help” is the biggest issue men face. Men today constantly complain that men’s mental health is ignored but make fun of anything that could bring a sense of joy or whimsy into their life. One example I have seen of this, is on my social media feed, I see men constantly criticize Friendsgiving, Christmas parties, galentines, and say that they would never partake because it is “gay” or “a girl thing”, and another person stitched that and said this is why men’s mental health is so low. One huge reason is simply because of the rejection of community and fun, simply to hold that “strong image”, and I feel like seeing men being denied a hysteria diagnosis is the 1880s version of exactly that. On top of this, I took note that a big aspect of this story was the parallels between getting your period and developing menopause, and how this is a clear sign that hysteria is linked within the nervous system. Besides my readings, I then asked Chat GPT to summarize this story, where it mainly summarized the effects, hysteria had on women before it started being linked to a mental disorder, implying that this previous diagnosis locked women under the care of men, which I agree with.
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