Prune Antoine

While investigating a criminal case that rocked Germany, a fivefold infanticide during the Covid-19 pandemic, Prune Antoine discovered that gender inequalities in women’s mental health are chronically underexplored. In the nineteenth century, psychiatry repressed female behavior that was considered deviant or dangerous. For "desperate cases," the alienists went as far as to practice the amputation of the clitoris. Women were interned in "asylums" because they had refused the traditional role that was assigned to them: wife and mother. Antoine argues that today's psychiatry remains hostile to women, both in diagnosis and care. Legally, the criteria used to define "mental illness" are often not adapted to women. Some specific conditions, such as post-partum psychosis, aren't even researched properly; in hospitals, the majority of people treated with electroconvulsive therapy are women. Furthermore, since the Covid-19 pandemic, mental health has been plummeting, and depression and parental burnout have exploded. This is a question of global health and social justice that needs to be adressed. Antoine's current research aims at challenging the historical gender bias within psychiatry through the analysis of interviews and reportages in closed wards, while identifying promising new practices in Europe and beyond.