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:

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)