Complementary Competencies

Being a technically oriented person and functioning in a technically oriented milieu are phenomena which don't stand in a psychosocial vacuum. Vanessa's work with STEM professionals is complemented by her skills in a variety of issues and intersectionalities common to technical people.

Gender: Men, Women, and Others

Men

The STEM fields are predominantly male. Simply stocastically speaking, to be a therapist who treats engineers is to be a therapist who treats men.

Yet men, as a demographic, have historically sought out psychotherapy services at rates much lower than women; from the point of view of psychotherapists, men constitute a minority treatment population. Many clinicians surmise that a feedback loop is operating over many decades, optimizing therapeutic approaches for the modal female patient at the expense of effectiveness with male patients, which in turn drives away men seeking care, which in turn further reduces the opportunity clinicians have to learn from and be guided by the experiences of men.

Arguments have been raised that diagnostic categories have been shaped by this bias, that some conditions present differently in men, and are therefore underdiagnosed in men. For instance, Terrance Real argues persuasively that depression is profoundly underdiagnosed in men because in men it commonly manifests as anger, irritability, and substance abuse, not sorrow or grief. When someone expresses their depression that way, they are most likely not to be understood as suffering or afflicted, but as criminal and antisocial, and treated accordingly. The message they get is that they should swallow their distress and tough it out — alone.

But for many technical men, the issues of gender, identity, and mental health don't end there. [Anti-intellectualism in American masculinity.]

Race and Class

Hi-IQ

Atheism, Skepticism, Deism, and non-Christian Religions Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Relationship Minorities Subcultural Identities: geeks and nerds, SF and SCA

• Home
• Philosophy
• Complementary Competencies
• About Vanessa
• Location & Parking
• Technology