Citation

Villar CF. Philos. Ethics Humanit. Med. 2024; 19(1): e8.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s13010-024-00158-8

PMID

38867305

Abstract

Gothic literature-a genre brimming with madness, supernaturalism, and psychological terror-offers innumerable case studies potentially representing how psychiatric patients perceive their treatment from healthcare professionals. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous 1892 short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" offers a poignant example of this through its fictional narrator, a diarist many interpret to be suffering from postpartum depression. The fiction here does not stray far from reality: Gilman orchestrated her diarist's experience to mirror her own, as both real author and fictional character suffocated from a melancholy only made worse by their physicians' insistence on following the "Rest Cure." While this instruction to cease all work and activity was a prevalent depression treatment at the time, Gilman, through "The Yellow Wallpaper," reveals how the intervention ultimately harmed more than helped because it overlooked her-and, by extension, her fictional diarist's- unique needs and identities. Today, while the ineffective Rest Cure no longer exists, applying observations from "The Yellow Wallpaper" to clinical research calls attention to underrepresentation in treatment development, a costly problem that could be mitigated by mindful incorporation of intersectionality theory into study designs.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Medicine in Literature; Intersectionality; Clinical Research; “The Yellow Wallpaper”; *Biomedical Research; Gothic Literature