Abstract: Read through a psychoanalytic lens, The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the Self in conflict with societal pressures to be docile and conform. Lorde manages to reconcile her past self with her new reality by rejecting the guise provided by a False Self in order toContinue reading “A Psychoanalytic Review of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals”
Monthly Archives: October 2021
What is a Mental Health Doula?
During my training as a birth and postpartum doula, I received little education on perinatal mental health. When mental health was addressed in the postpartum doula training, the acronym PMADs was thrown around as a catch-all phrase for Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. In a previous post titled Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum, I articulateContinue reading “What is a Mental Health Doula?”
Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum
Continue with the topic of language from a previous post, I’ve been thinking about how the terminology we use impacts our awareness of and education about people’s lived experiences with mental health challenges. This post will focus on those experiences surrounding childbirth. There has been an increasing awareness about the term postpartum, meaning the periodContinue reading “Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum”
Healing Journey: When Therapy is Harmful, Not Helpful
Trigger warning: perinatal psychiatric crisis, psychiatric incarceration, systemic violence In a previous post, I wondered if I outgrew therapy. I questioned whether I worked through or “got over” my trauma. I was ready to quit. However, instead of breaking up with my therapist, I was able to have a powerful conversation in which I realizedContinue reading “Healing Journey: When Therapy is Harmful, Not Helpful”
The Language of Madness
Since my diagnosis in 2012, I slowly became indoctrinated in the medical model of mental illness which emphasizes a biological basis for “abnormal” behavior. As a person living with bipolar disorder, I learned to categorize my lived experience within diagnostic terms, like manic or depressed, and looked to therapy, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology for a cure.Continue reading “The Language of Madness”
Nadia Naomi Mbonde 