Women’s Mental Health: Insights, Strategies, and Support
It's challenging for women to cope with mental health conditions within our patriarchal society. This article from Thriveworks Therapy provides tips and strategies for what we can do in the face of sexism and bias.
Getting support for mental health can be a complicated process for women. Women face cultural myths and tropes like the “hysterical woman” stereotype from the 19th century. There is a long history of dismissing women as excessively emotional, irrational, and weak. This can hold us back from seeking help for real conditions. It also causes other people to discourage women, claiming we are overreacting or saying that what we’re experiencing isn’t real. Women may experience backlash just for seeking help.
Medical professionals are not immune to bias either. Even when we seek help, women are more likely to go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed or to have our symptoms ignored and dismissed.
Anxiety, depression, OCD, and panic disorder are more common in women than in men. Perhaps because women are conditioned to internalize their feelings, they are more likely to have these anxiety-related disorders.
We can nevertheless take steps to care for our mental health. We can make coping easier by creating a network of support, pursuing hobbies, doing activities that we enjoy, and taking time to reflect on our feelings and emotions regularly. When we desire to seek help for our mental health, we can share that desire with a close friend or family member, vocalize our struggles, and strive to change our inner dialogue and outlook.
One of the most common struggles that women experience with their mental health is, again, access to care. Women’s accounts of the symptoms they experience are disproportionately dismissed by medical professionals, and this rate rises significantly with the intersectionality of identities such as race, sexual identity, body size, etc.
SOURCE: Thriveworks • AUTHOR: Hannah DeWitt and Alexandra Cromer, LPC • LAST UPDATED: November 1, 2023
