Psychology of Women’s Health and Health Care

The psychology of women's health is an area traditionally controlled by male-orientated scientists, psychologists and doctors. Women by definition have been unquestioningly seen and treated as deviant from the male norm. This model has been challenged by feminist historians and sociologists, but not by psychologists who seem to have implicitly accepted the medical models, and emphasized the pathology in women's behaviour and emotions. In this book, women's views and their experience of their own health and health care are taken seriously, and analyzed within a psychological and a feminist angle. It includes chapters from psychologists who work in research, teaching and practice. Paula Nicolson and Jane Ussher are co-editors of "Gender Issues in Clinical Psychology". Jane Ussher is the author of "The Psychology of the Female Body" and "Women's Madness: Mysogyny or Mental Illness".