The most common mental health issue in women is depression. Research has shown that twice as many women experience depression during their lives as men. Because of its prevalence, it's important to understand its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment.
While good mental health is essential to the overall health of both men and women, women experience some mental health conditions at higher rates than men. In fact, around 1 in 6 women in Australia will experience depression and 1 in 3 women will experience anxiety during their lifetime.
The most common are anxiety disorders major depression and bipolar disorder. Below is more information on these disorders and how ACCESS can help.
For example, due to their brain's wiring, women report higher levels of empathy and emotional understanding than men. These qualities, while generally positive, are closely tied to worsening depression, anxiety, and trauma. Women also have different experiences than men, as they walk through life.
Today, women are three times more likely than men to experience common mental health problems.
Women on average report more pain when compared to men, and there seem to be more painful conditions where women exhibit a greater prevalence than where men do. Sex differences in pain vary according to age, with many differences occurring during the reproductive years.
Borderline personality disorder is one of the most painful mental illnesses since individuals struggling with this disorder are constantly trying to cope with volatile and overwhelming emotions.
Anxiety disorder is the most treatable of all mental illnesses. Anxiety disorder produces unrealistic fears, excessive worry, flashbacks from past trauma leading to easy startling, changes in sleep patterns, intense tension and ritualistic behavior.
The most common mental illnesses in Australia are Anxiety Disorders, Affective Disorders (such as Depression) and Substance use disorders (ABS 2022a).
Treatment rates varied greatly for different mental disorders, for instance. Adolescents with ADHD, conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder received mental health care more than 70 percent of the time. By contrast, teens suffering from phobias or anxiety disorders were the least likely to be treated.
A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was published in early February 2023 found that, in 2021, 57% of high school girls reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year,” up from 36% in 2011.
Women with PTSD may be more likely than men with PTSD to: Be easily startled. Have more trouble feeling emotions or feel numb. Avoid things that remind them of the trauma.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has long been believed to be a disorder that produces the most intense emotional pain and distress in those who have this condition. Studies have shown that borderline patients experience chronic and significant emotional suffering and mental agony.
Borderline Personality Disorder and Stigma
Because of the stigma associated with this disorder, medical professionals can be reluctant to diagnose a patient with BPD or may even refuse to use this diagnosis even when all the signs and symptoms are clearly present.
The anorexia death rate is the highest of all mental illnesses as it is a very complex and complicated disorder. It requires early diagnosis and access to care with close follow-up and often long-term treatment. Each patient's risk must be evaluated individually.
The psychopathology Arthur exhibits is unclear, preventing diagnosis of psychotic disorder or schizophrenia; the unusual combination of symptoms suggests a complex mix of features of certain personality traits, namely psychopathy and narcissism (he meets DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder).
Compared to non-patients, BPD patients showed the anticipated higher crying frequency despite a similar crying proneness and ways of dealing with tears. They also reported less awareness of the influence of crying on others.
Among humans, women's life span is almost 8% on average longer than men's life span. But among wild mammals, females in 60% of the studied species have, on average, 18.6% longer lifespans.
Differences were especially strong in pain tolerance—even though male participants had higher tolerance, female participants were less variable across visits. According to the researchers, this was the first study to measure gender differences in the test-retest reliability of pain sensitivity in humans.
The study indicated that women get more negatively affected, both emotionally and physically, by a heartbreak. Women participants rated their 'emotional anguish' to be 6.84 post break up and whereas, the figure turned out to be 6.58 for men.
The irony of the perceived need to 'man up' is that women are actually a better bet under pressure. This is because of oxytocin. Under pressure, men are biologically conditioned to respond by competing to win.
And yes, we are mentally stronger too
According to a study conducted by the researchers from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the University of St. Gallen, and NYU Shanghai–women tend to cope with pressure better than men, who tend to buckle during tense moments.