Credits

...

Stormseeker, "Let me drown."

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

World Map, by Clker

Clker, "World Map"

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

...

Sarah Grasset, "Thomas"

Photo by Sarah Grasset Photography, Kuala Lumpur

Credit must also go to all my clients, whose feedback and suggestions - and whose remarkable journeys of recovery and growth - continue to inform and guide the evolution and application of my intervention protocols. In developing said interventions, I have done a fair bit of research into the typical, historically presenting issues.  Turns out that they are not new, and various approaches have been attempted at different times.  Having found that clients respond positively to the novel idea that they are not crazy, and that they are neither alone, nor the first to find themselves in their situation, I am providing a largely un-commented, selective time line of developments that I have found to be of interest.

1748

PhD thesis of Marc Lemort Demétigny

First recorded use of the word "psycho-somatic", in his PhD thesis featuring "ideas which are certainly not common", to quote a contemporary reviewer.

(Of course, the concept of body/mind interactions, and indeed the holistic approach reaches back thousands of years across various cultures.) 

1953

South African Medical Journal Volume 27, Issue 36

"The Problem of Lower Abdominal Pain in Women"; one of the first clinical speculations as to the psycho-somatic nature of "women's issues".
In reviewing the efficacy of invasive procedures of the day, Johnson concludes that "about two-thirds of these patients could have been helped by common-sense advice and by teaching the patient to live with herself. The other third could have been helped by psychiatrists."

1960

Newsweek Volume 55, Issue 10

Special Science Report by Edwin Diamond: Young Wives

This article puts forth symptoms that resonate deeply with modern expat wives, such as

  • having everything while feeling empty
  • struggling with their own self worth, and
  • a husband that prioritises his career:
"[Such a woman] is dissatisfied with a lot that women of other lands can only dream of. Her discontent is deep, pervasive, and impervious to the superficial remedies which are offered at every hand."
"A good education, it seems, has given this [woman] an understanding of the value of everything except her own worth."
"[Businessmen], especially the rising young executives who commute, have become 'overnight guests and weekend visitors' in their own homes. ''Women love men and men love their work,'' the aphorism goes."

1963

The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

In her book, credited with "kicking off the second wave of feminism", Friedan dissects "the disenchantment syndrome" after reframing it "the problem that has no name"; and which would later be labelled "the housewife's disease".
(Valium came onto the market in this same year.  Inextricably intertwined with the housewife narrative, that topic is much too complex to tackle here.
Cf. the 2010 entry, below, though)

1964

South African Medical Journal Volume 38, Issue 25

Housewife's Disease - a Modern Psychosomatic Syndrome
"Housewife's disease [...] can have serious implications for the health, happiness and indeed stability of the individual [if] the wife and mother of the family drifts into a state of confusion and demoralization, with regard to both her mental and physical qualities."

2010

The Milbank Quarterly Volume 88, Issue 1

How an Age of Anxiety Became an Age of Depression

Depression diagnoses have skyrocketed over the last 60-odd years, through perhaps not due to actual changes in our mental health:
 "Before the 1970s, depression was understood as a rare condition. It suggested obsession with death, feelings of utter meaninglessness, and even psychosis. If a person was diagnosed with a psychological problem in the 1950s or 1960s based on anything from sadness to odd sleeping patterns to interpersonal stress, it was likely to be called anxiety. [...]
When the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) came out in 1980, it made it far easier to diagnose a patient with major depressive disorder (MDD) than an anxiety condition."

Today

Expat Wife Whispering

Let's make things better, much much better
It is tempting to comment upon the struggles of the housewives of earlier eras, trying to draw parallels, to explore the therapeutic approaches of the day even, perhaps.  None of that gets us any closer to a solution, though.  If you have recognised yourself in parts of this timeline:
No matter your current situation, there is no shame in being exactly where you are. But it would be a shame to just stay there.  Talk to Me.