[1] Numerous groups recognized Brothers for her strong leadership as a woman in the psychology field and for trying to end the stigma around mental health.

Joyce Brothers was born to Jewish attorneys Morris K. Bauer and Estelle Rapport, who shared a law practice.

[5] Following the death of her husband, Brothers fell into a state of depression for a year and contemplated suicide; however, she used her work to achieve inner peace and recover.

[1] Afterward, she entered Cornell University, double-majoring in home economics and psychology and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with honors in 1947.

At that time, her husband was making $50 a month as a medical intern at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, which was not enough to support them and their three-year-old daughter.

[1] To escape what Brothers called the "slum-like conditions" of her New York City walkup, she was driven to enter as a contestant on the game show The $64,000 Question.

[1] With the gender roles of the time in mind, Koplin thought he could draw in the most viewership by juxtaposing Brothers's perceived frailty as a woman with the idea that she knew a great deal about a more masculine field.

Despite the show's producers' efforts to stump her at the $16,000 mark by asking questions involving referees rather than the boxers themselves, she exceeded expectations and won the top prize.

[1] Her success on The $64,000 Question earned Brothers a chance to be the color commentator for CBS during the boxing match between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Two years later, Brothers appeared on the spin-off series The $64,000 Challenge, which brought in the winners of The $64,000 Question[1] and matched them against experts in the field.

[1] In efforts to market and promote their new textile fibre Trevira polyester, the German chemical company Hoechst provided Joyce Brothers with her own show.

[1] This goal was evident in almost every aspect of the show, from Brothers's discussions onto the topic of fashion to the production of the set, which was decorated entirely in the Trevira fabric.

[1] The show initially was located in the Broadway Theatre District in New York and moved to Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Plaza during its second year.

[1] Titled Living Easy with Dr. Joyce Brothers, the show consisted of guest interviews, musical performances, how-to-demos, and a weekly segment dedicated to psychology.

Sponsors were nervous about whether a television psychologist could succeed, she recalled, but viewers expressed their gratitude for her show, telling her she was giving them the information they could not get elsewhere.

Brothers appeared as Lillian McGraw in Episode 18 of the TV series Ellery Queen (NBC OAD: February 29, 1976).

[1] She was viewed as the public crisis counselor as she was asked to comment on issues like Princess Diana's death and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.

As this was a riveting circumstance, the show was left running for three more hours uninterrupted, so that Brothers was able to extract a phone number from the woman to get an ambulance to her.

[1] In 1979, she provided proposals at the congressional hearing on "problems of mid-life women,” speaking on employment, retirement income, and anti-ageism in television characters.

[1] Stevens and Gardener, the authors of Women of Psychology, stated that “traditional psychologists smile subtly when her name is mentioned and they often complain that she actually does more damage than good.

[1] There were 15 hours spent preparing for each show, with consultations with other professionals and the breakdown of the grand field of psychology to be understood in terms of everyday language.

[1] All this occurring behind the scenes, during the actual shows there were many references to scientific research and explicit statements that psychology is a service, not simply a source of entertainment.

[1] Mental health was stigmatized and not as covered in the media, but Brothers strived to contribute significantly to giving people a different perspective.

[5] Her light on these topics assisted in normalizing these within the mainstream media, with an explicit importance on therapy for everyday life and not only those with mental illness stated.