Doctor Nolan said, quite bluntly, that a lot of people would treat me gingerly, or even avoid me, like a leper with a warning bell. My mother's face floated to mind, a pale reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth birthday. A daughter in an asylum! I had done that to her.

Esther Greenwood's exposure to the mental health care system was very negative, as it is for many other people in the 20th and 21st centuries. In all that time though, why has there been such little improvement in stigma against the mentally ill? I have already shown that he Stigma against people with severe mental illness (SMI) can cause great damage. Not only can it cause more anxiety in patients, but it can limit their career and social opportunities  Stigma starts with health professionals, who more often than not do nothing about the problem. The reasons for this are varied. Some professionals say they are too busy, while others think that one individual cannot change stigmatization. Many think that the stigma attached to mental illness is a part of the greater stigma against other illness, and is therefor too great of a problem to fix.

Many psychologists and health professionals have put together programs though to help alleviate stigma in hospitals, and in the real world. One of the chief advocates of programs with this common  goal was former first lady Rosalynn Carter. The Carter center has put together  several initiatives to improve the American mental health care system. First of those that I encountered is the Primary Care initiative launched in 2008. The purpose of this program was to address this hidden problem in American health care, and provide earlier diagnosis and treatment for mental illness in a primary care setting.

The program argued that an overhaul of the primary care education system, including starting a more rigorous training in mental illness diagnosis and treatment, is necessary to fully implement reform of the U.S. health care system. John Bartlett, MD, MPH, senior adviser at the Carter Center's Primary Care Initiative stated that, with mental illness which affects one quarter of Americans, billions of dollars are waster because clinicians are not properly trained to recognize and treat these disorders properly and in a primary care setting.

The plan have five steps to improve mental illness treatment, and as a result lesson stigma. First is the education of health professional students about the socioeconomic, demographic, political, and cultural issues affecting mental health care. Also to encourage professional programs to introduce a psychology or sociology course as a requirement to enter the program. Second is to develop more of a person centered approach to health care, rather than a disease centered approach. This includes encouraging team work with the patient, their families, and other professionals to help the patient. Next the initiative wants there to be a shift from the specialty care setting to the primary care setting while dealing with treatment in behavioral care. Fourth is an increase in resources dealing with mental health, and more research towards cures and solutions. Lastly is to enforce the measuring of  results from the initiative so that we all can see what is working to alleviate illness, and what isn't. The program still exists today and is a living example that it is not out of our reach to improve the care of mental illness, and the stigma that tails behind it.

                         

I crawled back into bed and pulled the sheet over my head.  But even that didn't shut out the light, so I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night.  I couldn't see the point of getting up.  I had nothing to look forward to.

While reading the Bell Jar it came to my attention that many of the problems that Esther has, are generated by the criticism from the people around her. With her depression came a new stigma against her. Her mental illness made other people judge her and treat her differently than they normally would, leading to even more symptoms and depression. Not only is this stigma in Plath's novel though, but in our real world today.

Especially after the recent shootings in Aurora and Newton a new spotlight has been shed on mental illness. The stigma against mental illness has only grown stronger as the media has started to emphasize even more, violent crimes committed by people with illnesses like depression or schizophrenia. Although 95% of violent crimes are committed by people without mental illnesses, someone with schizophrenia are four times more likely to become violent then someone healthy. Studies have shown though that proper treatment can significantly lower this risk though. Stigmas against mental illness can serve very much though as barriers against both treatment and diagnosis.

Public stigma is not the only factor that lower the self image of the mentally ill. Self stigma can perform just as much damage. This happens when you take the pressures and negative views of your illness and internalize them, causing damage to your optimism and self esteem. When someone ill is stigmatized by those around them, with notions of incompetence or danger, further damage can be inflicted. People who agree with the negative stereotypes develop negative feelings and emotional reactions; this then becomes prejudice  Then someone from the public may because of this choose to stay away or judge someone with a mental illness because of these fears or stereotypes.

To prevent further damage because of stigmas and stereotypes steps need to be taken to prevent them. These steps could include easier access to mental health care, education at an earlier age about mental illness to prevent misconceptions, and an improvement of the media's attitude towards mentally ill.

                         

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do [...] I felt dreadfully inadequate [...] The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

From the beginning of the book, perhaps the greatest threat facing our Esther Greenwood is her impending future. Esther was an intelligent student with a passion for writing and the literary arts like many students today going into college. Looking into the future, Esther does not see any clear path for herself. She does well school and in winning scholarships, but has not acquired the necessary skills to succeed in the career path she desires like being fluent in multiple languages. Today many college students face similar dilemmas after graduating, realizing that their major does not have all that many job opportunities.

There are two sides to the argument about whether a liberal arts type major is really worth it. Studies have shown that many of the majors that produce the highest unemployment rates are related to the liberal arts like anthropology, film and music. These majors also have some of the lowest starting and median salaries. Many would argue even if those are the subjects you are really passionate about, you should still try to major in something more technical or with a higher salary. Because of this pressure though many students have been avoiding these majors. Now less and less students are majoring in these topics. The world today is much more centered on technology than it used to be, and many jobs require several years of special training and mathematical knowledge. It would only make logical sense for more students to go for the engineering degree.

This process has been happening ever since the Victorian period and the start of the industrial world, and many are against it. Hallman Bryant wrote in his article that there is a difference between knowledge and training. Universities are about learning about the world and pursuing topics you have great interest in. College should not just be something you have to go through to get a job, but somewhere you want to be. Many others also agree with him that society needs liberal arts students. The ideas and philosophies of these students have helped shape the culture of the western world for years, and it would be a great lose to loose them. There are many ways to put a "useless" degree to work, especially if you have some technical skills to go with it. Although there are pros and cons with going for a liberal arts degree, most people would agree that if you pursue something you don't love just for money, you will regret it later.

                    

With each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.
I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done. 

In  Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, one of the main themes discussed is the mistreatment of the mentally ill throughout the mid twentieth century. Esther must involuntarily go under Electroconvulsive Therapy for treatment for her serious depression for an extended period of time. Rather than improving her condition, this "treatment" drives her to contemplate suicide. A treatment that was supposed to help her, Esther viewed as a punishment.

The use of electric shock and also Insulin shock therapies started in the 1930's by Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini who eventually received Nobel Prizes for their discovery. The use of chemicals like Insulin were eventually replaced by electric current, and today Electroconvulsive Therapy is still used. Because of the lack of antidepressant drugs at the time it was used much more widely than it is today . In the earlier years of its existence, no anesthesia or muscle relaxers were used, plus the amount of current was much higher than used today. The use of electricity to treat depression and other psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia has been one of the most controversial psychiatric treatments over the past decades and is still debated today though now it can only be administered  with the consent of the patient.

Electroconvulsive Therapy or ECT for short involves a brief amount of electric current being administered to the brain to start a temporary seizure. After the prescribed number of doses the patient is considered to be healed, but often with many adverse side effects. Most commonly known of  these effects is memory loss and confusion. Even advocates of the treatment do acknowledge that there is some permanent memory loss from during the time period from a few days to a few weeks before the treatment. Although among many there has been successful healing with this technique, there are also a considerable number of patients who have found this processes terrifying and distressing. And while the practice of ECT continues to grow safer and more efficient, my overwhelmingly negative impression of it for reading The Bell Jar still has a strong influence over me. The mixed reactions I have read about this treatment continue to bewilder me, so in a future installment I will go into more depth to see if I can finally make up my mind over the issue.

 The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way, I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equal time and let s equal the total distance.-The Bell Jar

 Esther Greenwood, an aspiring young English major of the 1950's was faced with a dilemma of what to do with her life after graduating, a problem students still face today. Although women had growing importance in the mid-20th century work force, there were only a few limited career opportunities open to her. Esther yearned to write, but not what someone else dictated. She wanted to become her own author  and branch out in whatever direction she wanted. That really was not the most practical option for her though. With little foreign language experience and a principal skill of scholarship winning, there were not many great jobs available.

Shorthand, a secretarial notation was often viewed at the time as a necessary skill for women in the workplace during the 50's. About 70% of women in the workplace held jobs in the clerical branch, or in factories. Having a clerical job was out of the question for Esther, as it would have been for many other women aspiring for something greater. Dictating the words of men held no appeal to Esther, and also the abbreviated  words often used quickly became one of her pet peeves. There were plenty of women authors, but many professional and managerial positions were still closed to women during this time. Only about 15% of working women were professionals, and 6% held managerial positions. At the same time, African American women were even more limited in what jobs they were allowed to hold. These jobs were almost exclusively domestic and physically demanding.

Ever since WWII when women had to fill positions for men off at war, there had been an increasing movement towards women's equality in the work force. When the men came back, many women still kept their jobs, and thus a new class of mothers and single women making their own income began. To allow women to be able to support themselves with this income the Department of labor took several steps towards equality in the workplace like equal pay and training for professional positions. Although these reforms did not materialize until later, this decade was responsible for the start of the equal pay movement. The effects that this movement made are still very poignant today. This gender gap in the workplace will most likely stay around for a long time to come, but seeing how far women have advanced into the professional and managerial fields, brings much hope for the future.

"What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinity security," and, "What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from"..."The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."

 As I begin my exploration into the world of Sylvia Plath, there is one theme that dominates the struggles of Esther. There always seem to be two forces pulling on her life, the traditional values of how she "should" live her life, and what Esther really wants to do. Much like Virginia Woolf, Plath writes of the frustrations of women trying to express their desire to write creatively in a world where that it is often discouraged. Even though The Bell Jar takes place in a much more modern era, the tendency for women to feel the only professional job they can take is a menial or secretarial one still existed. If Esther could not launch her writing career, the only options still practically open for a woman in her situation were to become the wife of a career man and raise a family, or become a secretary.

In the 1950's you had the stereotype of the "nuclear family" that supposedly dominated every woman's dreams of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. As opposed to in Woolf's or Plath's eras, today there is so much more diversity in how the family life is structured. If Esther had lived today, surely she would have not felt so much wrongness in wanting to live freely with or without a husband.

How did it come about that married life today is often so different?  According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The amount of men with the same opinion dropped from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Now why is this happening that men are finding it less appealing to get married than women? According to research done by Suzanne Venker it's because due to the decline of this family model "women aren't women" anymore". According to many others though it is because many people of both genders do not feel as great of a need to get married, especially at a young age anymore.

There is a logical fallacy here. The definition of a family unit is ever diversifying and changing in modern times, but is that the cause of this drop in men finding marriage essential. Just because this social change happened does not mean that it is the cause of the statistic. Is there another factor in play here changing the way we view marriage?

Introduction

Hi, my name is Alison Judd. On this blog I will be writing about the issues addressed in the book The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.