# data[].attributes.body
Mental illness was often associated with those who commited violent crimes or who were “insane” and who exhibited symptoms of psychosis.  The general public only thought mental illness to be psychosis, and didn’t include depression anxiety, etc. in the definition of mental illness.  This, ultimately, led to mental illness carrying the stigma of exhibiting violent, hysterical, and unpredicatble behaviors...  Which, in reality, isn’t true for many who suffer with it.

# data[].attributes.body
Women often suffered from mental illnesses, such as depression or anxiety, in the 1950s. This was due to women feeling like they didn't have a purpose or an identity outside of being so-and-so’s wife.  Many women would get married, have children, and tend to the husband and home.  Housewives didn't have an identity of their own, leading to many women having an identity crisis, contributing to their anxiety and/or depression which was present in millions of women.

# data[].attributes.body
Married women oftentimes depended entirely on their husbands to provide for the family while she tended to them.  That meant that if the husband was unfaithful or did something unforgivable, divorce and escape may not even be an option, especially with children.  As a result of this, marriage almost seemed like a trap, as referenced in the Bell Jar—

“So I began to think maybe it was true that when you’re married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state” (Plath 45).

# data[].attributes.body
In the 1950s, more women went to college and earned a degree.
However, these degrees weren’t often put to use because they became housewives.  This did nothing to help with the identity crices that women commonly experienced, nor did it help their depression that came from the looming fate of becoming a housewife.
Image address

# data[].attributes.body
In the The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, a college girl wrote to Friedan saying, "I don't want to be interested in a career I'll have to give up.  My mother wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time she was twelve, and I've seen her frustration for twenty years. I don't want to be interested in world affairs. I don't want to be interested in anything beside my home and being a wonderful wife and mother. Maybe education is a liability" (Friedan 67). The same college girl later wrote, "I wonder how it would feel to be able to stretch and stretch and stretch, and learn all you want, and not have to hold yourself back" (Friedan 67). This girl wants to learn, she wants to be involved in the world, but she realizes that the more she learns, the less she will be happy as a housewife.
#NotAHappyWife

# data[].attributes.body
In the 1940s and 1950s, the insanity defense had just been created, adding to the stigma that those who suffered from mental illness were violent.

# data[].attributes.body
Betty Friedan wrote in The Feminine Mystique, "The feminine mystique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their identity. The mystique says they can answer the question 'Who am I?' by saying 'Tom's wife... Mary's mother'"(Friedan 64). Women in the 1950s didn't have an identity of their own. Their identity was dependent on their husband or their children. This lack of identity only helped in making women, as a whole, more depressed.
#IdentityCrisis

# data[].attributes.body
Often times, those who were seen as being mentally ill—or rather, insane—were sent to asylums, such as the one bellow, where they were subject to often barbaric “treatments” and harsh conditions.
Image address

# data[].attributes.body
Hydrotherapy was the practice of exposing patients to warm baths or showers for a long period of time in hopes of a calming effect.  This was not one of the favored methods of treating mental illness, however.

# data[].attributes.body
Occupational therapy aimed to occupy patients with career exploration, engaging activities, and pursuit of hobbies in order to give them a sense of purpose and motivation.

# data[].attributes.body
Drug therapy is prevalent today and in modern medicine.  In the 20th century, it was not as common.  In the 1950s, the first psychotropic drug called Thorazine was put into use, supposedly calming “unruly behavior, anxiety, agitation, and confusion,” though it also had many adverse effects.

# data[].attributes.body
Electroshock therapy has not always been what it is today.  In the 20th century, electroshock therapy was one of the most fearsome and seemingly barbaric methods of treating mental illness; it was also one of, if not the most, favored methods.  In most instances, electric shock was told to be horrifying, such as in the Bell Jar:

“...I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done” (Plath 76).

The narrator describes her first experience with this method of therapy similarly to something of a nightmare.
#Shocking

# data[].attributes.body
A lobotomy was a surgical treatment thought to alter behaviors by changing the part of the brain which controls social interactions in which the brain’s frontal lobe nerves were accessed through the eye socket and severed.
Image address

# data[].attributes.body
Children and wives were often entirely dependent on their husband/father.  If the husband were to do something unforgivable, such as engaging in an affair or abusing the children, women were more likely to put up with it.  This often caused women to develop depression, leading to them continuing to deal with their husbands because they saw no way to escape the dynamic they were so dependent on.

# data[].attributes.body
The life as a housewife was virtually the same for most women and lacked individuality.  In a way, getting married seems more like a pact than a union of two individuals.  This is referenced in the Bell Jar.

“‘What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security’” (Plath 38).

Click here to see an average housewife's daily schedule.
#HousewifeLife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Chordettes - Mr  Sandman (Live 1958)

# data[].attributes.body
The issue of gender inequality, which is arguably still present today, skyrocketed in the 1950s.  In A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf,  the author discusses the uneven playing field between men and women; she argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf 4).  While Woolf is specifically referring to authoring, the same can be said for any profession a woman wishes to pursue in the 1950s, and how discriminatory customs deflected criticism by blaming the affected individual(s) for their circumstances.

# data[].attributes.body
Since it was widely accepted that those who were mentally ill had to be violent, it was common for those suffering from depression or anxiety to be told that they were either choosing to be mentally ill or were blamed for their illness.
An example of this can be seen in the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, in which the narrator’s mother expresses how glad she is that the narrator “decided” to get well.

“‘I knew you’d decide to be all right again’” (Plath 77).

# data[].attributes.body
Until 1980, hysteria was a studied psychological disorder—a sex-selective disorder, to be exact—which characterized women as more emotional, irrational, and presenting more symptoms of mental illness.  Hysteria was alleged to be selective to women because the root of their “female issues” was their uterus.

# data[].attributes.body
From ancient times, it was believed that uteruses effected the entirety of a woman’s health, both mental and physical.  One widely accepted theory of “roaming uteri” states that the uterus was not anchored within the body, but instead migrated throughout it.  It was thought that as the uterus moved throughout the body, it exerted presssure on other organs, prompting hysteria.  Retention of menstrual blood was also blamed.

# data[].attributes.body
Seeing as womens’ bodily fluid levels were blamed for hysteria, the logical treatment for hysteria is the release of bodily fluids.  To spare the ridiculous and gory details, marriage and intercourse, as well as genital stimulation by a medical professional or midwife, were recommended.
#Hysterical

# data[].attributes.body
It was ideal for a wife to be pure for her husband, especially in the 1950s.  The idea of purity was stressed immensely, as is evident in various types of media from the time period, such as the Bell Jar.  Women who engaged in sexual acts were often seen as dirty, sometimes even when engaging in such acts with her spouse;

“...so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her.  He’d go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free of all that dirty business” (Plath 77).