Women and Mental Health

By Siddhi

When today’s world focuses on progress in every aspect of life, female empowerment is often overlooked.

For true development of a society, women and their progress must be given as much

attention as that of men. This includes attending to their mental well-being.

Pressures created by their multiple roles, gender discrimination and associated factors of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, overwork, domestic violence and sexual abuse, combine to account for women's poor mental health.

According to the World Health Organization Report, 2001:

● Depressive disorders account for close to 41.9% of the disability from neuropsychiatric

disorders among women compared to 29.3% among men.

● Leading mental health problems of the older adults are depression, organic brain

syndromes and dementia. A majority are women.

● An estimated 80% of the 50 million people affected by violent conflicts, civil wars,

disasters, and displacement are women and children.

● Lifetime prevalence rate of violence against women ranges from 16% to 50%.

● At least one in five women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.

Overall rates of mental disorder are similar for men and women, but there are striking gender differences found in the patterns of mental illness.

Women find it hard to talk about difficult feelings and internalize them. This can lead to

problems such as depression and eating disorders. They may express their emotional pain

through self-harm, whereas men are more likely to act out their feelings through disruptive or anti-social behavior.

Communication between health workers and women patients is extremely authoritarian in many countries, making a woman's disclosure of psychological and emotional distress difficult, and often stigmatized. When women dare to disclose their problems, many health workers tend to have gender biases which lead them to either over-treat or under-treat women.

Unipolar depression, which was predicted to be the second leading cause of global disability

burden by 2020, is twice as common in women.

The lifetime risk of anxiety disorders is 2–3 times higher in females as compared to males.

Around 10-20% of women experience depression while they’re pregnant or after giving birth.

Women are exposed to more sexual violence than men, which means more women are affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

There is a direct correlation between the frequency and severity of such social factors and mental health problems in women.

The fifth Sustainable Development goal of the United Nations is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. This can be brought about by addressing their issues. Of the several issues that need immediate attention, is their mental well-being, as discussed above.