In the 19th and early 20th century it was fairly common for women to suffer from postpartum depression and not get a proper diagnoses causing them to progressively get worse.  In The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Gilman writes about how women’s mental health was disregarded and could often cause it to worsen.  Through incorrect diagnoses the women were not properly treated and therefore would not get better.  In the article by Avalene Bateman she discusses the how it was important for women to understand the symptoms of postpartum depression and how it was common for doctors to misdiagnose postpartum depression as other things.  The common treatment was for physicians to place women on “rest cures” this was created by S. Weir Mitchell’s.  This treatment meant that women were to not take care of their child and to be left alone until they started to feel better.

Postpartum depression was a fairly common health issue in the 19th and 20th century because of the amount of stressed put on women due to societal standards for how a mother should care for her child. In the 19th century and early 20th century 10-20 percent of women experienced postpartum depression (Bateman 57). This would mean that it was a fairly common thing for a mother to experience postpartum depression. Gilman writes that the mother says she feels nervous around her child (302). This shows that she feels incapable of caring for her child and providing for him in the way he needs. Bateman then says that society causes women to drive themselves crazy by expecting them to care for themselves along with the children (59). Bateman shows how society caused women of this time period to feel a large amount of stress about taking care of their children. Gilman shows an example of how women were affected by these feeling of being inadequate based on Bateman’s explanation of the causes for mothers not feeling connected to their child and like they could provide for the child. 

 .     Bateman says that in this time period postpartum depression was often treated in the same manner as regular depression (61).  The narrator says that the doctors have her taking “phosphates… and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise…” (Gilman 300).   Phosphates at the time were used to treat ordinary depression because they stimulate energy production.  Since women were improperly treated it could cause more problems for the women and cause the women to not get better but to actually get worse.  Bateman also wrote that for women to get better they needed to “be encouraged to understand their depression” (61). In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator does not seem to understand why she feels so nervous around her son and after doing any kind of work feels extremely tired.  The narrator says that while she wants to be with her child she cannot be, because it causes her to become nervous (Gilman 302).   This shows how by her being isolated away from the child it is only causing her depression to worsen and instead of helping her get better it is instead causing her to feel more distant from the child.  The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper does not understand why she feels nervous around her child because she does not understand that she has postpartum depression causing her to feel distant from the child.  Since she does not understand her disease and her physicians do not either she is not getting the proper treatment for the disease.

In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator suffers postpartum depression and through it being not properly treated and her instead being told to rest and do nothing she goes insane. (Gilman 300).  This type of treatment is called a rest cure, a common treatment for patients who were diagnosed with hysteria and nervousness (Bassuk 245).  The rest cure meant that the individual being treated was told to rest and put into seclusion, it also meant that women had to do exactly as the doctor’s told them to in order for them get better (Bassuk 246-247).   In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator is put into a room on the top floor of the house with no other rooms on that floor (Gilman 301).  When she asks her husband to be put on the lower floor he tells her no that she would be better up there, in seclusion, since he is not home much during the day and often gone at night also (Gilman 303).  

In this time period it was often considered to be a standard way of treating depression for a woman to be treated with medicine, told to rest, and put into isolation.  Doctors of this time period did not understand postpartum depression so they were not able to accurately treat the illness.  Since it was treated like any other form of depression the women would not be able to easily overcome the form of depression, because in order to overcome it a mother needs to spend time with her child and also take care of her child.  Being put into the position of not being around the child at all and not having to do anything for the child caused the mother to not be able to bond with the child and would cause the depression to worsen.  Since the doctors of this time period did not understand this type of depression they did not think much of it and often told the mothers that the disease was all in their head.  This did not help the women get better because their disease and the way they felt was undermined and made out to be something of the imagination.

Through misdiagnoses women were often not properly treated for postpartum depression causing them to get worse to the point pf them going insane. The use of the resting cure technic women would be placed into isolation.  This was proven to be ineffective because in order to treat postpartum depression women needed to be stimulated and have something to do at all times.  Since they were being told to do nothing but rest and not taking care of their children, it would cause them to feel less connected to the baby and make the depression worsen.
