The Yellow Wallpaper Diagnosis
Background Information-The patient’s husband, John,has moved her into a home far from society. Her relationship with him is almost broken, it resembles the relationship between and inmate and a prison guard.
In the beginning of my evaluation I noticed the patient had recently had a child. The child and it’s mother had no relationship or connection, in fact the patient is locked in an upstairs bedroom, with bars on the windows, a decrepit bed, and torn yellow wallpaper, by her husband and kept away from the baby. I see that you are concerned about your daughter because is claiming to be sick but John doesn’t believe her. John has actually been heavily medicating her without any proper diagnosis. I do not believe that the patient is physically ill but I can see that she has multiple personality disorders.
Mental Status Examination- I have observed many extremely alarming behaviors from this patient. The first behavior I examined was her distant relationship with her baby. She has never once held, fed, or even been in the same room as her child. She had told me she had no motivation to even look out of her bedroom window any longer. These behaviors have caused me to diagnose her with postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is when postpartum depression is a mood disorder that can affect women after childbirth.
Mothers with postpartum depression experience feelings of extreme sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion that may make it difficult for them to complete daily care activities for themselves or for others. The second behavior I examined was her strange infatuation with the wallpaper in her room, she has torn the paper from the walls and has gone on tangents saying the wallpaper was made her sick and she hates it with a passion. This is why I am also diagnosing this patientwith obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, this patient’s obsession is the wallpaper it gives her real anxiety and interferes with her relationships with her family. Her compulsions are the urges she has to peel and rip the wallpaper off the walls. The final diagnosis I have for this patient is schizophrenia.
This patient believes that there is a women living behind the wallpaper in her room, she no longer speaks or has any interest in activities that don’t involve staring at this hallucinations. The symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations, delusions, reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life, and reduced speaking, these are all the symptoms this patient has. Recommendations-This patient has been diagnosed with, Postpartum Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Schizophrenia. I recommend talking one-on-one with a mental health professional the kind of therapy I suggest is Interpersonal therapy (IPT), which helps people understand and work through problematic personal relationships. That will help with the postpartum depression. To cope with the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder I prescribe Fluoxetine this is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor pill that will treat the anxiety that is caused by the patient’s obsession.
I suggest that this patient should be put on antipsychotics are injections that are given once or twice a month and startgoing to therapy so she can learn coping skills to address the everyday challenges of schizophrenia.
