Gender and mental health
Mainstreaming gender and women's mental health (DoH, 2003) states that:
"Gender and women's mental health cannot be mainstreamed in any sustainable way unless it becomes an integral element in the training of staff and managers at every level and within every organisation; training for practitioners is identified as the suggested starting point under this section. In the longer term, these issues need to be incorporated into pre and post-graduate training for all mental health disciplines" (p. 16).
The document goes on to suggest that education and training should include competencies in relation to:
- the social and economic context of women's and men's lives;
- life experiences that may impact on their mental health e.g. violence and abuse;
- the interplay between gender and other dimensions of inequality such as ethnicity,
- age and sexual orientation;
- differences in the risk and protective factors for mental health in women and men;
- differences in women and men in presentation and their pathways into services;
- differences in the treatment needs and responses of women and men;
- the relationship between gender and power inequalities and how this may affect individual service users, staff and the organisations in which they work or are cared for; the day-to-day family, social and economic realities of women and men's lives.
Tony Evans, senior lecturer in social work at Oxford Brookes University, attended a recent study day organised by the Social Perspectives Network on the theme of Women and Mental Health. See here for the report of the day which includes his summary of issues for educators.
Mervat Nasser and Laura Epstein describe here a module on women and mental health run as part of the MSc in Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry: Minding the body: learning and teaching about women and mental health.
See here for links to:
- women and mental health and
- parenting.
If you have any links or ideas relating to teaching about gender and mental health please do get in touch.