ABSTRACT
This chapter explores women's first-person experiences with the mental health establishment. This unique contemporary anthology of women's experiential writing shares women's realities, perceptions and experiences within the therapeutic environment. These artistic expressions of personal experience helps women understand their own encounters in a new light. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, which inspired this title, has come to represent the struggle of contemporary women to be understood by the Charlotte Perkins Gilman from whom they seek psychological support and psychiatric treatment. An icon of feminist writing, the 1892 story symbolizes affirmation and validation for the female experience regarding mental health and therapy. It will also enlighten those in the helping professions as they extend their services to women in a time of growing need and shrinking resources. Carrie White died in 1991, after being incarcerated in a Florida mental hospital since 1909.
