My best guess is that as a mental health startup geared toward expanding access to therapy services, they were fishing for candidates who had some kind of experience with the industry, or who could prove their fealty to the mission. For example: "After grieving the loss of my brother, I tried to obtain counseling services. But my private insurance didn't cover that, and when I looked for supplemental insurance, I was stuck in a byzantine maze of options. There was no centralized and easy way to see what might be covered, and for what cost; all of it was hidden behind sales reps you had to contact over the phone. That's when I came to understand the value of the kind of service ACMECORP is looking to introduce into the market."
The interviewer has control over the room. They steer the conversation. They could have stopped this at any point. Instead they encouraged OP to go deeper for 90 minutes.
That wasn't OP misunderstanding a question, that was an interviewer enjoying the power trip.
To be fair though, drama-dumping goes beyond that
It's a difference between "asking when you don't care about response" vs "asking because you genuinely want to know how the other person is"
In Poland you would just say Hej! = I acknowledge you being there but I don't want to chat. But again, back to the point I was trying to make - the intent behind these sort of questions (and answers) can be cultural
And, yeah, I feel bad for her. But also: time and place.
I passed on her because she didn't have the technical skills, but that was definitely a case of the setting not being right.
In this case the interviewer asked these questions to get to know the candidate in a professional setting, so they expected a diplomatic or professional answer. The candidate however misjudged the interviewer intention behind the questions, took them literally and answered them truthfully. Neither of these people is technically sporting a wrong position, yet the communication broke down.
That being said, the idea that you can choose not to talk about certain things is pretty basal when it comes to communications. If you have a trauma nobody can force you to talk about it and you should also not talk to everybody and their dog about it (and I know people who constantly do this and have a tendency to regret it afterwards). It costs you nothing to say that you can't think of any specific day, or talk about a day where a old boss at a shitty student job abused you, to frame it in work terms. To talk strategically or diplomatically is a skill that is needed in many positions. And that candidate displayed a total lack of that ability.
That being said I am not particularly fond of that type of question myself. Both as an the person carrying out an interview and the person going to one. I am more interested to see how a person tackles certain situations than to have them tell me stories about it.
¹: see https://www.orientation-philosophy.com/glossary/double-conti...
And there is no bias in this assumption whatsoever?
Don't blame the poor guy who was subjected to this. You're projecting your understanding of what is normal for the interviewer and assuming that the particular interviewer didn't cross any of the lines you wouldn't. Unless you are the interviewer or know their side of the story, there is literally nothing in the post that would suggest your reading is correct.
A simpler explanation: the interviewer was an amateur psychologist with little experience in either interviewing or therapy. They asked "interesting questions," then were overwhelmed by answers they hadn't expected and couldn't gracefully handle. That's it. Please, unless you know more about that particular instance, don't reflexively blame the candidate for what looks like a series of errors on the interviewer's part.