Psychosis and the Reproductive Body - 2 x 45 minute sessions- Reconceiving Peripartum Psychosis: Developmental, psychosocial, and phenomenological perspectives - Elizabeth Pienkos, PsyD, Marie Brown, PhD, Tate Hudson, MA, Brenda Froyen
- Not Just Hot Flashes: Navigating Extreme States in the Menopausal Transition - Leah Harris, MA
Reconceiving Peripartum Psychosis: Developmental, psychosocial, and phenomenological perspectives - Elizabeth Pienkos, PsyD, Marie Brown, PhD, Tate Hudson, MA, Brenda Froyen.
Peripartum psychosis is a largely underresearched condition, and interventions vary widely. In the U.S., it is primarily attributed to biological causes, and treated via medication, often in inpatient psychiatric settings. The narratives of women who face peripartum psychosis, however, reveal the significant role played by communication about idealized states of motherhood, and their conflict with women’s real experiences of motherhood, in the development of distress and ultimately psychiatric symptoms. In this panel, we will highlight these frequently unheard stories of psychosis and motherhood, and the potential for interventions to either enhance or disrupt attempts at integrating a wide range of experiences found in pregnancy and early motherhood. Presentations will offer reflections on: the experience of peripartum psychosis and encounters with medical and psychiatric institutions; phenomenology and its potential to illuminate two recent narratives of peripartum psychosis, Inferno (Cho, 2020) and Setting the wire (Townsend, 2019); multidisciplinary perspectives on peripartum psychosis that help to escape a purely biomedical vision of this condition, drawing specifically on a developmental (i.e., matrescence) and socio-political lens; the possibilities in feminist phenomenology to help unpack the progression of experiences reported by women with peripartum psychosis. From these talks, we hope to offer a range of ways to think about peripartum psychosis that can shape intervention to be more responsive to women’s lived experience.
Not Just Hot Flashes: Navigating Extreme States in the Menopausal Transition - Leah Harris, MA
The menopausal transition can be characterized by a wide range of embodied experiences, including new onset or intensification of voice-hearing and extreme states. Presenter + psychiatric survivor Leah Harris went through extreme states for the first time during this phase of life, and will share insights from documenting and researching this experience over the past five years. For example, there is a documented "second peak" in first onset of extreme states that occurs during the menopausal years of 45-55, as well as higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization and suicide. Yet there is little to nothing in the way of awareness and customized supports for people experiencing psychosis for the first time during midlife. This workshop will highlight holistic, de-pathologized, gender-inclusive, and social justice-based strategies for understanding and raising awareness about this complex, mysterious, and important facet of human experience.
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