Essay On Rest Cure

Rest cure was administered to women with intense nervous signs and symptoms. The rest cure was introduced by S. Weir Mitchell who sought to find the cause of varying appearance of nervousness which was known as nervous exhaustion in the nineteenth century. He found out nervous exhaustion was caused by anemia and an irritating environment either in the workplace or at home. The solution to nervous exhaustion according to Weir was the rest cure which kept the patient away from their stressful environment and placed them in an intense regimen of six to eight weeks of total bed rest, massage, mild exercise and controlled diet. The patient was not allowed any form of activity except only cleaning the teeth (Bassuk 251).
The treatment involved a

Usually to avoid anxiety cases and worry, any news from home were properly edited. Mitchell believed that secluding the patient from the family was beneficial as some cases of nervous breakdown were caused by instability in families and stress in the household. Other than boosting a patient’s health the treatment also included education where Mitchell would take the patient through philosophical trainings, logical thinking and ways of controlling emotions. This was referred as moral reeducation and it helped the patient gain patience, consolation and resignation (Bassuk

Gilman is a woman who went through the rest cure treatment after she got into depression after giving birth to her daughter. The treatment did her depression no good and instead it made her condition worse and she was forced to leave her family and the treatment. The Yellow Wall paper serves as a response to the rest cure treatment prescribed to Gilman by Mitchell and her husband. It gives the details of the treatment and how the men involved that is Mitchell and Gilman’s husband isolated and assaulted her (Vertinsky