Women and Mental Health: Inspired by International Women’s Day

“The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Rather than a blog about my own personal experiences, this is more of an information blog. I have provided some thoughts about women and mental health and included some illuminating facts and statistics. I was inspired to create this blog post by International Women’s Day this weekend.

Mental health problems affect women and men equally.  It seems however that women are more likely to talk about their problems, leading to the assumption that more women suffer mental health problems. However some mental illnesses are more common in women, for example eating disorders. Although gender often doesn’t matter, treatments often have to be sensitive to and reflect gender differences.

Why are the statistics higher for women in some areas? There are various social factors which may go some of the way to answering this question. Women are particularly exposed to some of the factors that increase the risk of poor mental health because of the role and status that they typically have in society.  Some of these social factors are discussed on the Mental Health Foundation Website. They cite the following examples:

• Women are the guardians of family health – traditionally women have the responsibility of looking after family health.
• Women as carers- most carers are women, whether they care for their children, partner, parents or other relatives and friends.
• Women and mid-life – the combination of facing physical health changes, and caring for a family, maintaining  a job etc. increase the risk of middle-aged women experiencing a mental health problem.
• Women and social support – women are more likely to talk about their problems because of strong friendship support networks.

As I said at the beginning of this blog some problems are more common in women than in men, although generally statistics are even. Despite even statistics women are more likely to be treated for a mental health problem. This reflects women’s greater willingness to acknowledge that they are troubled and get support. It may also reflect doctors’ expectations of the kinds of health problems that women and men are likely to encounter.

I have listed some of the illnesses more prevalent in women:

• Depression. 1 in 4 women will require treatment at some time, compared with 1 in 10 men.  
• Self Harm.
• Anxiety. Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders as men.
• Dementia. 2/3s of people with Dementia are women.
• Eating Disorders. 1.9% of women and 0.2% of men experience anorexia in any year.

On the other hand – Men are more likely than women to have an alcohol or drug probelm.

• 67% of British people who consume alcohol at ‘hazardous’ levels, and 80% of those dependent on alcohol are male.
• Almost three quarters of people dependent on cannabis and 69% of those dependent on other illegal drugs are male. 

A lot of these sats were taking from the Mental Health Foundation website, but there is also information on the NHS webpages and WHO (World Health Organisation) and www.womenshealth.gov. So go and have a read if you want to find out more. This blog was more of a taster, a quick look at a very complex and ever-changing subject.

I hope this blog post has been interesting and taught you something about women’s mental health. I am in no way undermining mental health cases in men. I am simply presenting some information about women to honour and celebrate Women’s Day.

PS: My favourite female writers at the moment are Sylvia Plath (always my fave), Ruby Wax (a new addiction), Susanna Kaysen (Author of ‘Girl Interrupted’) and Jeanette Winterson. Check them out. They all write about mental health in one form or another.