Patients have families / Henry B. Richardson.

  • Henry B. Richardson
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Patients have families / Henry B. Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    also had before her the example of her father who was dominated by a woman, his older sister. In the place of her own mother she had an institution in which she lived for many years; and this may explain her later attitude toward institutions in general, as places from which she was entitled to get all that she could without as suming any responsibility for herself. Her picture of herself as a frail and retiring girl and her failure at school provide the setting for her attitude toward her daughters. , A psychiatric impression of Mrs. Q— was as follows: Meno pausal syndrome. 1 Symptoms of hot flushes, fatigue, seem closely related to her emotional tension. A mild psychoneurosis, with much anxiety and sexual maladjustment. This has become aggravated, due to the menopause, economic stress, and strained family relation ships. Mrs. Q— describes her own personality, with much emphasis on how well she does things, how capable she is, and how she is sacrificing herself for her husband and children. Her troubles are getting her down. She gets annoyed with the family when they are sloppy, as for instance when her husband does not shave. She is very critical. Mrs. Q—'s capability did not, however, include the ability to manage within her income. Her husband said that even when he was earning good money his wife was living so much above their standards that they were often in debt and had no money on hand for a week at a time. He used to dread bringing home his salary, because he knew that it would be spent immediately. He was so disgusted that he wanted to go out and drink, although he never did so. She can't budget and she can't be reasoned with. This estimate checked with that of the social agencies, who found Mrs. Q— in constant difficulty about her finances, in spite of her flair for tapping additional sources of income. Neither the family agency nor the medical social service succeeded in inducing her to keep to any budget plan. 1 Syndrome: a characteristic group of symptoms.