Misdiagnosis In The Yellow Wallpaper

Mental Health is a chronic misdiagnosis today. For many years, mental illnesses were down played and not taken seriously. Physicians thought women suffered from “the baby blues” when in reality, they were suffering from serious illnesses. Woman who were not treated properly for depression would spiral into out of control psychosis. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the writer is being diagnosed by her physician husband. He feels she is suffering from nervous depression and living in the country with a lot of fresh air will help her get better. Even if she started off having depression after giving birth, the story unfolds to show that she has a more severe case of Post-partum Psychosis. Her symptoms are suggestive of something far more shocking

The writer states she is able to see people out on the lawn, even though she has been told there is no one there. She is also paranoid that John and Jennie will find her papers and states she is sure she found them snooping in her things. At one point, she writes she can smell the wallpaper, this screams psychosis. She is convinced that the wallpaper is shaking and that there is a lady who loves behind the paper and when this woman creeps around it causes the shaking. She describes her inability to sleep at night so that her caregivers are glad when she is able to get rest. They even go so far as to make her rest for an hour after her

People are scared of the stigma it causes and the medicines used to treat the illness are not always successful. Once diagnosed, patients will stop taking meds if they don’t feel different or stop taking them when they do feel better because they think they have been cured. Many people go their whole lives without an actual diagnosis but they know there is a problem. In “A Worn Path.” Phoenix knows she has a problem. She knows her mind leaves her, but she doesn’t know she has dementia. The staff in the doctor’s office treat Phoenix poorly. She is quickly written off as a charity case. No one in the office shows compassion to Phoenix. There is no offer of arranging transportation for the old woman to get home. She battled a lot of obstacles to get to the office in the first place. She walked, in the cold, all the way to the office. She was pushed into a ditch by a dog and was probably wet, so when she arrived at the office she must have looked disheveled. Compassionate care would have tried to help her get the services she needed. If the staff was concerned the grandson was alive or dead, then they send the appropriate agency to go out to her home and check things out. Phoenix needs someone to step up and help her. She would benefit from having an actual Dementia diagnosis because there medications that could return her to health and she may be able to have less episodes where she loses her