The Rest Cure: A Look Back on Women's Treatment of Mental Health

By Alex Wolf on September 25, 2016

Chances are, you haven’t heard of the rest cure. I hadn’t heard about it myself until my senior year of high school, when one of my teachers loaned me a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. It tells the story of a housewife and new mother suffering from depression in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Unable to fathom why she would be depressed after the birth of her child, her husband instructs her to undergo “the rest cure” and confines her to her room in hopes that her health will improve. However, things take a horrifying turn as, cut off from most human contact, the woman begins hallucinating and losing her mind, thinking she is seeing the figure of a woman in the yellow wallpaper of her bedroom.

http://pchujman.cumbresblogs.com/2016/03/09/the-yellow-wall-paper-2/

But what exactly is the rest cure? Developed by famed neurologist of the time Silas Weir Mitchell, it was considered the best treatment for women suffering from depression and nervous behavior. In order to restore physical and mental health, the patient would be confined to a specific room for two to three months at a time. They would not be allowed to leave their bed, or even to move much unless instructed. They would also receive daily massages to stimulate blood flow, as well as an extremely heavy diet to help them gain weight. One of the most terrible aspects was that patients would sometimes be force fed the strenuous diet if they refused.

The Yellow Wallpaper is partly based off of author Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s own experience with the rest cure, which she underwent in 1887 when she suffered from depression after her daughter was born. Treated by Mitchell himself, she wrote later that after following his treatment for a few months, “I came perilously close to losing my mind. The mental agony grew so unbearable that I would sit blankly moving my head from side to side”(The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 96). In her memoir, Gilman denounces Mitchell as a medical misogynist, claiming that his treatment of inactivity and forced isolation nearly cost her her sanity, and that during treatment he advised her as a woman to “live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time, lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush, or pencil as long as you live”(Gilman 96).

Charlotte Perkins Gillman http://www.branchcollective.org/?attachment_id=1752

There is certainly evidence of Mitchell being incredibly unsympathetic toward his female patients. It is worth noting that there was also a version of the rest cure for men, but it was much less strict and regimented. Men undergoing the rest cure could be allowed out of bed once a day, and were allowed to read and write as much as they wanted. There was also the “West Cure” where men could forgo the rest cure and instead take a trip to the West to bond with other men and regain their health.

In contrast, Mitchell often referred to his female patients as “invalids,” or “hysterical,” and recommended that a hardened nurse be assigned to each female patient so that they would not get accustomed to having their every desire met and possibly start neglecting their household duties. He was notably harsh and cruel to female patients, especially if they tried to disagree with his methods. Mitchell had also written several times in his books about his feelings toward traditional gender roles, “The woman’s desire to be on a level of competition for men and assume his duties is, I am sure, making mischief”(Mitchell13). It seems that the rest cure for women was intended to reinforce traditional gender roles and keep women in their respected sphere, and had little respect for the woman’s mental health or feelings on the treatment.

Weir Mitchell http://www.branchcollective.org/?attachment_id=1756

However, in recent years, scholars have brought to light ideas that somewhat refute Mitchell’s status as a misogynist. They claim that for every woman who had a horrible experience with the rest cure, there where a number of women who benefited. Many of Mitchell’s female patients claimed the strict regulation of the rest cure cured many of their ailments and left them feeling refreshed and happier. Many of these women were writers like Charlotte Perkins Gillman, and claimed that Mitchell actually encouraged them to write and express themselves after their treatment. These new scholars argue that Gillman disliked and clashed with Mitchell on a personal level, and that’s why she wrote such a scathing review of his treatment. In another book of hers, Gilman actually downplays the madness that befell the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, claiming that she herself had never actually hallucinated to that extent when she was undergoing her treatment.

Either way, the concept of the rest cure gives us a pretty unsettling look into how mental health was dealt with in the 19th century, and even well into the 20th century. As a woman who can suffer from depression and anxiety, I shudder just thinking about having to deal with it in a time where the symptoms were seen as a women being lazy and hysterical. We have come a long way since then in the conversation about mental health, but it’s worth noting that we still have a long way to go. Maybe looking back at these types of practices will help us remember that it was only very recently that people suffering from mental health issues weren’t just thought of as lazy or hysterical, and we still have a long way to go to try and refute the stigma surrounding mental health.

 

Source: The Branch Collective (http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=anne-stiles-the-rest-cure-1873-1925)

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