Mistresses, Part 2: Mental Health Professional Analysis and Scorecard

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains information from Season 1, Episodes 1-13 of Mistresses (US).
TRIGGER WARNING: This post briefly describes mild sexual violence, and references rape culture. 

Sorry for the hiatus, folks! I'm back, and am jumping back in to pop culture analysis and deconstruction with  Mistresses' portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Karen Kim, (played by Yunjin Kim).

First, some background. As discussed in the Mental Health Profession 101 post, a psychiatrist is someone with a medical degree [such as a D.O. (doctor of osteopathy) or M.D. (medical doctor)] who has completed post-doc training in assessing and treating psychological distress (things like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, trauma, etc.). Most psychiatrists prescribe psychotropic medicine, and some also provide psychotherapy. Mistresses Dr. Kim is one of the latter. In the show, she is co-partner at a psychiatric private practice with former medical school colleague Jacob Pollack (played by Matthew del Negro).

There are a fair number of pros, and unfortunately, even more cons in Mistresses' portrayal of Dr. Kim. Let's start with the pros, shall we?

Mistresses, Part 1: Meet the Cast

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains information from Season 1, Episodes 1-11 of Mistresses (US), as well as some information from Mistresses (UK). 

Let's begin our social justice and mental health-informed exploration of pop culture with the US television series Mistresses. Based upon a UK series of the same name,  US Mistresses was created by K.J. Steinberg, and stars Alyssa Milano, Jes Macallan, Rochelle Aytes, and Yunjin Kim as four friends who wittingly or unwittingly become "mistresses" in some sense of the term.

Before we go any further, let's unpack some of the impact and connotations of the series' unfortunate name. The word "mistress" can have one of several meanings, ranging from:

Pop Culture Ratings

As promised, now that we've outlined social justice 101 and the mental health profession 101, we'll now explore popular media, and how effectively and accurately it portrays the mental health profession, as well as to what degree it promotes social justice, as opposed to reifying existing systems of oppression.

In the interest of transparency and accountability, below are the criteria that will be used to measure to what degree each popular medium promotes social justice and reasonably portrays the mental health profession.

Let's start with the criteria for the social justice grade. Each popular medium will be assessed to see if it passes the (original)

Bechdel Test
Which requires that a film, television series, book, etc. has

1. At least 2 women (preferably with names)
2. Who have at least 1 conversation
3. About something other than a man or men. 

 Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian outlines and discusses the test.

Mental Health Profession 101

Soooo...this next post was supposed to be about the intersection of social justice, pop culture, and the mental health profession. And then, I remembered that I hadn't yet posted my mental health profession 101 article. Whoops! My bad. Thus, here's a (not so) brief overview of some of the basic concepts of the mental health profession.*

For starters, what do we mean when we say "mental health?" 
Psychological wellness, or mental health: 

• Can be understood as a state of well-being wherein the individual can 
• realize her/his own abilities
• cope with the typical stresses of everyday life, 
• work productively and fruitfully, and 
• make a contribution to her/his community (World Health Organization, 2013)

Defining the Wires: Sexual Orientation and Religion 101

Finally, we'll be reviewing two of our (usually) invisible, and nonetheless impactful identities: sexual orientation and religious orientation.  Uneasy bedfellows, you say? Yet, at the heart of nearly every religious tradition is love--for oneself, for the divine, and for others.

Defining the Wires: Age, Disability, and Class 101

I've been struggling with how to most effectively group the remaining 5 major identity variables that make us who we are. I've decided to group together age, disability, and socioeconomic status, as these are core identities that we can often (though not always) visually perceive. Sexual orientation and religious orientation, core identity variables that we usually can't see will make their appearance in the next post.


Age is one of those interesting, fluid identity variables that we experience from numerous perspectives throughout the course of our lives.
Ageism:

• Therefore, is a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values used to justify age-based prejudice, discrimination, and subordination.
• Ageism is predominantly understood as stereotyping of and discrimination against older people--and in many ways, this is how ageism manifests in its most virulent form. 
• However, any system of oppression is the product of prejudice and systemic power, and in the case of age, (in US culture, at least) individuals from the age of about 35-55 experience the most age-related power and privilege.  
• Subsequently, individuals younger than their mid-30s and older than their mid-50s tend to experience the most age-related disempowerment and discrimination (with elders, adolescents, and children bearing the brunt of this)
• Dr. Alison's note: while the physicality and appearance of individuals in their teens and 20s are often valued and coveted by popular culture, in comparison with individuals in their 30s-50s, teens and 20-somethings are often culturally understood as less responsible and less competent, and experience significantly less societal and institutional power. Subsequently, they are included here in the age minority.
• Like any form of oppression, ageism can be conscious and/or unconscious

Defining the Wires: 19 Racial and Cultural Terms You May Not Be As Familiar With As You Think

Next up in Social Justice 101, we'll be reviewing race, culture, and nationality.

Let's start with 

Culture: 

• Or, external, acquired traditions of thought and behavior
  

Defining the Wires: 15 Gender-Related Terms You May Be Using Incorrectly

I promise I'll start talking about pop culture soon. Really, I will. Aaaaand, I'd like to do so from a social justice informed perspective, and make sure we've got vaguely similar ideas of what that means. So now that you've mastered sociopolitical realities 101, here are 15 gender-related terms you may not be as familiar with as you think.

First up, is  

Gender:

• Which refers to the rules, norms, customs, and practices through which biologically associated differences (e.g. primary sex characteristics-note: link NSFW, secondary sex characteristics-note: link NSFW, chromosomal sex-note: link SFW, etc.) between people are translated into socially constructed differences between men and women, and boys and girls. These socially constructed differences award unequal value, opportunities and life chances to people based upon their gender.
• Despite the fact that history and anthropology suggest that human conceptualization of gender has not always been binary, many modern cultures understand gender as either/or, female or male. Socialization in the culture of this binary understanding starts quite early:

 

Defining the Wires: Socoiopolitical Realities 101

Philosopher Marilyn Frye invites us to
[c]onsider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.

It is now possible to grasp one of the reasons why oppression can be hard to see and recognize: one can study the elements of an oppressive structure with great care and some good will without seeing the structure as a whole, and hence without seeing or being able to understand that one is looking at a cage and that there are people there who are caged, whose motion and mobility are restricted, whose lives are shaped and reduced. (Frye, 1983, The Politics of Reality).

Rules of Engagement

Welcome to On the TV Couch with Dr. Alison!

I am a recently graduated doctor of clinical psychology, and plan to use this blog as a place to explore and generate discussion regarding the representation of mental health professionals in popular media, utilizing a social justice-informed lens.

Yup, that's a mouthful. So what does that mean? Through this blog, I'll be examining, analyzing, and discussing the ways that mental health professionals are depicted in television shows, films, popular books, etc. Moreover, I'll be doing so from a social justice or diversity-informed lens, and also examining and discussing the representation of diversity topics within the popular medium (show, movie, book, etc.) selected.

Social norms in many cultures view both mental health and diversity topics as ones we do not discuss in polite society. Subsequently, many people (myself included prior to grad school!) haven't had the chance to learn and practice the etiquette of discussing these issues. Thus, here are the rules of engagement for this blog: