However busy they are, it is important that women look after their mental health. Traditionally, women have tended to take on the responsibility of looking after the health of members of their family as well as themselves. For instance, women often shop for their family and influence what they eat or advise their family when they feel unwell. This role makes it particularly important that women understand how the choices we all make in everyday life can affect our mental health.
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Most carers are women, whether they care for their children, partner, parents, other relatives or friends. Women carers are 23% more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression than women in the general population, according to a survey of carers in England.
75% of people who care for a person with a mental health problem are women and the average age of carers is 62 years.
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Mental health of women in mid-life
Women in ‘mid-life’, aged 45-60 years, may be juggling caring commitments as they care for children and older relatives as well as doing paid work and facing physical health problems. At the same time, mid-life women may find themselves in financial difficulty as a result of lifelong lower pay, part-time working, family caring, widowhood or divorce. This combination can increase their risk of experiencing mental distress.
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Women’s friendships with other women help protect their mental health, providing a source of support, particularly in hard times or at times of loss or change. Mentally healthy women generally talk about their feelings more than men and more often have stronger social networks of friends and family.
They are more likely to tell someone when they are troubled, whether it is someone they are close to or someone who can offer medical advice. Good social support can play a part in preventing mental ill health and can help people recover from mental health problems.
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There are no significant differences between the numbers of men and women who experience a mental health problem overall, but some problems are more common in women than in men.
Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men (29% compared with 17%). 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 problem that women and men are likely to encounter.
About 25% of people to die by suicide are women. Again, this may reflect women’s greater emotional literacy and readiness to talk to others about their feelings and seek help. Being a mother also makes women less likely to take their own lives.
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. The traditional roles for women from some ethnic groups living in the UK can increase their exposure to these risks.
The social factors particularly affecting women’s mental health include:
- more women than men act as the main carer for their children and they may care for other dependent relatives too – intensive caring can affect emotional health, physical health, social activities and finances
- women often juggle multiple roles – they may be mothers, partners and carers as well as doing paid work and running a household
- women are over represented in low income, low status jobs – often part-time - and are more likely to live in poverty than men
- poverty, working mainly in the home on housework and concerns about personal safety can make women particularly isolated
- physical and sexual abuse of girls and women can have a long-term impact on their mental health, especially if no support has been received around past abuses
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Some women find it hard to talk about difficult feelings and ‘internalise’ them which can lead to problems such as depression and eating disorders. They may express their emotional pain through self-harm whereas men tend to express their feelings in other ways and are as likely to use violence against others.
Depression
More women experience depression than men. 1 in 4 women will require treatment for depression at some time, compared with 1 in 10 men. The reasons for this are unclear, but are thought to be due to both social factors such as poverty and biological factors such as the hormonal changes experienced by women. However, some researchers dispute the relatively low depression rate for men.
Post-natal depression is believed to affect between 8 and 15% of women after they have given birth. Post-natal depression is not the same as the ‘baby blues’ which are very common, but last only a few days.
Difficult life events such as bereavement or physical illness can act as triggers for depression. Older people are often faced with more difficult life events and daily stresses than younger people and this may explain why they have a slightly increased risk of depression.
Estimates suggest that 20% of older people living at home show symptoms of depression with the figure rising to 40% for older people living in care homes. The majority of people affected are women. Those over the age of 85 are at particular risk. Women’s increased life expectancy means they are more likely than men to outlive their partner and move into residential care.
Self-harm
Many more girls than boys self-harm. Self-harm describes the different ways that people deliberately harm their bodies, usually secretly, to help them deal with intense emotional pain. It can involve people cutting, burning, scalding or scratching themselves, breaking their bones, pulling their hair or swallowing poisonous substances. Research suggests that between 1 in 12 and 1 in 15 young people self-harm in the UK.
Anxiety
Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders as men. About 60% of the people with phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder are women. Phobias affect about 22 in 1,000 women compared with 13 in 1,000 men in Britain.
Dementia
Dementia affects 5% of people over 65 and 20% of people over 80. Just over half of these people have Alzheimer’s Disease. About a fifth of them develop dementia following a stroke when it is known as vascular dementia. Two thirds of people with dementia are women because women have a higher life expectancy than men.
Eating disorders
Eating disorders are more common in women than men, with young women most likely to develop one. 1.9% of women and 0.2% of men experience anorexia in any year. Between 0.5% and 1% of young women experience bulimia at any one time.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Worldwide, more women are affected by PTSD than men, largely because women are exposed to more sexual violence. The risk of developing PTSD after any traumatic event is 20.4% for women and 8.1% for men.
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Written in 2007
Statistics taken from:
- The Fundamental Facts, our 80 page digest of mental health facts and figures. More information
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Truth Hurts, our report on self-harm among young people
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