Mental health
WOMEN 1,5 to 2 times MORE LIKELY TO SUFFER FROM “COMMON MENTAL DISORDERS” AS MAN
A psychiatric disorder is an important factor which affects the quality of life. People who live with mental illnesses often face higher rates of unemployment, lack of a stable housing, and social isolation.
It has been shown that mental disorders, except alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder, are more frequently seen in women.
Women are one and a half to two times more likely to suffer from “Common Mental Disorders” as compared to men.
Women’s life cycles constitute an important topic in the evaluation of their psychiatric diseases.
Women have to play various roles in life and they have various challenges which are related to these roles. The female psychiatric patients should be evaluated in the special perspective of ‘being women’, along with other clinical parameters. The evaluation of the social, cultural and the economic aspects and the collaborative teams of different clinical disciplines which are related to women’s mental health would be beneficial.
Source:
Programmes to reduce the burden of common mental disorder in women should target poorer women, women with chronic physical illness and who have gynaecological symptoms, and women who use tobacco.
Source:
Risk and protective factors for mental health included: social factors, lifestyle, physical health, body mass index (BMI), diabetes, genetic and biological factors.
In all areas, differences and similarities were found between women and men. The most evident were the sex-specific risk profiles for depression with mostly external risk factors for men and internal risk factors for women.
Gender was not assessed directly, therefore we examined whether socioeconomic and family-related factors reflecting gender roles or institutionalized gender could be used as a proxy for gender. Overall, this systematic review shows differences and similarities in prevalence rates and determinants of mental health indicators between women and men. They underline the importance of focussing on sex specific approaches in mental health research and in the development of prevention measures. Current research on mental health still lacks focus on gender aspects. Therefore, an increased focus on sex and gender in mental health research is of great importance.
Source:
In a longitudinal study in the USA, children of women with depression were found to be five times more likely to develop depression across the course of their lives, compared to children of women without depression.
Knowledge is scarce on mechanisms in low-income and middle-income countries where maternal depression is highly prevalent, and stressful factors that influence the development of perinatal maternal depression and adverse child outcome (eg, food insecurity, perinatal infections, crowded or rural living conditions, and interpersonal violence) are both more intense and more common than in high-income countries.
Depression is more than twice as prevalent in young women than men (ages 14–25 yr), but this ratio decreases with age. Indeed, starting at puberty, young women are at the greatest risk for major depression and mental disorders globally. Importantly, before puberty, girls and boys have similar rates of depression; the rate is perhaps even higher for boys.
Why then is depression more prevalent among women? The triggers for depression appear to differ, with women more often presenting with internalizing symptoms and men presenting with externalizing symptoms. For example, in a study of dizygotic twins, women displayed more sensitivity to interpersonal relationships, whereas men displayed more sensitivity to external career and goal-oriented factors. Women also experience specific forms of depression-related illness, including premenstrual dysphoric disorder, postpartum depression and postmenopausal depression and anxiety, that are associated with changes in ovarian hormones and could contribute to the increased prevalence in women. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear; thus, treatments specific to women have not been developed.
The fact that increased prevalence of depression correlates with hormonal changes in women, particularly during puberty, prior to menstruation, following pregnancy and at perimenopause, suggests that female hormonal fluctuations may be a trigger for depression. However, most preclinical studies focus on males to avoid variability in behaviour that may be associated with the menstrual cycle. Nevertheless, primate and rodent studies consistently implicate a role for female hormones, such as estrogen, in depression.
