Big help for housewives

Press, 14 September 1976, Page 13

Big help for housewives

The section of the community that probably needs the Bishopdale centre the most is housewives. This is because the suburban housewife is particularly vulnerable to a rather sneaky mental disease called suburban neurosis.

She is more vulnerable if she stays at home rather than going to work, according to the superintendent of Kingseat Psychiatric Hospital in Auckland, Dr Fraser McDonald. The message Dr McDonald has given Lifeline

workers in Christchurch is that suburban housewives ought to get out and work, even if they have children, who can be cared for in day-care centres (after a certain age), ff they must stay at home, then they should join in community activities wherever possible. This is where the Bishopdale Community Centre fils into the picture. Even if it rescues only a small number of potential victims of suburban neurosis it will be doing great service. Dr McDonald says that suburban neurosis is prevalent in new housing areas and involves two types of women. The first he describes as the young married woman with young children. The second group is those whose children have grown up and left home. “Suburban neurosis is caused by anxiety, which varies from boredom to severe suicidal depression," says Dr McDonald. Symptoms include depression, apathy, anxiety, a foggy mind and inability to focus on anything too long, a lack of appetite, and a lack of feeling of affection. Community centres provide the sort of community involvement that housewives who are not working need. If they are not working there is the danger that they will shut themselves off and become victims of the suburban neurosis syndrome.