Western historical references to female mental illness

In one of my books about the 19th century American West, there is a short reference about life on the American prairie having the ability to induce mental illness in wives.

In parts of the Old American West, for example, Oklahoma, where the land is totally flat and featureless, a wind blows daily, all year around, only varying in intensity by season. This was verified by an Army veteran who had been stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma back in the early 1980s. He told me there was always a wind blowing, at best, I think, a strong breeze, at worst cyclonic force. The book references the wind as not noiseless, but constantly moaning, whining, howling. That alone was enough to grate on anyone's nerves.

Life on the prairie farms, homesteads, and ranches was rough for women AND men. Add to that the pressures of child-bearing and raising children while trying to clean, cook, do the household chores, clean the house and everything else while the husband was out doing his job. It took a strong woman, with willpower, religious faith, and hopefully, a loving, devoted husband who cared about his wife and encouraged and loved her to put up with the harsh, unrewarding life on the American prairie.

It's no wonder that people's lifespans in this environment tended to be short. American women and men were dying in their forties and fifties living out on the American West where the harsh climate, geography, unending toil and hard work, insufficient rest and medical care meant that you worked yourself into an early grave. And if you had an alcohol vice for self-medicating, your lifespan was shorter. Despite the immunities to traditional diseases, there were still a number of illnesses that felled the white settlers, ranchers, farmers, soldiers, cowboys, and farmhands. Tuberculosis was a common one that felled thousands. The American Indians, living a more healthy outdoor life, although hungry and miserable on the reservations, incurred far less TB fatalities. Typhoid and cholera still existed, although really rare on the prairie and confined to mostly the few Western small cities and towns.

I won't digress further. There's a lot of information about the real, miserable life in the Old American West, not what you see in Hollywood movies. At the end of the Civil War, the nation's attention once again turned West. Most Americans lived east of the 98th Meridian (approx. east of middle of Kansas). The vast region west of the 98th Meridian was not wholly American but still territories in actuality a vast frontier. Most Americans of the time considered 'America' as really that part of the country east of the 98th Meridian. Few Americans had any desire to enter the wild, 'savage-filled', 'American Desert', as the Old West was considered.

It's difficult for us modern Americans to wrap our minds around it. But there was a time in our nation's history when venturing out west past central Kansas, middle Texas, was considered very risky and very dangerous to the point of taking your life into your own hands. People who wanted to journey to California often opted for the very long but safer ocean ship journey around South America.