Mental Health and Women – Emerging issues and trends

By Cate Page, Chief Clinic Officer, Converge

This Women’s Health Week, the theme is ‘Your Choice, Your Voice,’ and the role we all play in empowering women to use their voice in both their own and other women’s healthcare. This includes women’s mental health, most specifically, loneliness and issues relating to body image and self-esteem with a potential link to social media. Alongside these well-documented issues is the newly recognised issue of discrimination in healthcare.

Mental health symptoms can be exacerbated by the hidden load many women carry for household responsibilities such as health checks, play dates, school forms, extracurriculars and parties and social events. A survey by the Australian Institute of Family Studies reported that “in 78% of households in the sample, the mental load was “always or usually” carried by the mother. In one-third, it was “always” the mother”.

Loneliness: A Major Issue Among Women

An ever-increasing issue with Australian women is loneliness. One in every four households now contain just one person, and over the age of 55, most people living alone are women. A “State of the Nation Report: Social Connection in Australia 2023 found that 32 % of Australians feel lonely. The percentage rises to 38% for those aged 18 to 25, with ‘Young women reporting higher levels of loneliness, social anxiety, and depressive symptoms than young men.’”

Many women living alone do embrace their solo experience. Still, as Hugh Mackay writes, solo households are “driving social isolation and represent a key contributor to the epidemic of loneliness that has us in its grip”. Overlaying this loneliness is women’s lower financial wellbeing, with ANZ’s Spotlight on Women report affirming: “Australian women [are] more likely to be struggling or getting by than men”.

Social Media & The Effect On Mental Health

Another potential contributor to loneliness is the world of social media. Questions are being asked about how it might contribute to mental health conditions for women. A study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that “exposure to idealised pictures and stories is associated with detrimental outcomes in female adolescents and young women.”

Johnathan Haigt wrote in the Atlantic that the collapse in young people’s mental health is partly due to social media. “We’ve handed over our children’s childhoods to tech companies who are motivated by profit to have access to our children 24/7, and what they are not doing is preparing them for life and real-world experiences”. He cited that the average American teen spends 5 hours on media platforms every day, with overall internet use at 7 hours per day.

Discrimination In Healthcare

Another issue recently reported by women is the experience of discrimination in healthcare. Statistically, the Department of Health and Aged Care reported in 2024 that “2 out of 3 women experience discrimination in healthcare”. Consistent themes included feeling dismissed and disbelieved, being stereotyped as ‘hysterical’ and a ‘drama queen’. Women reported that their symptoms and pain were often attributed to other causes such as menstruation, lifestyle factors or ‘faking it’.

Another incredibly courageous advocate was Nicole Cooper, one of Australia’s most important and well-known cancer patient advocates. She tragically lost her life to metastatic bowel cancer in 2023. Throughout her treatment, she wrote about how she “made herself saveable for her doctors by being early for her appointments, not complaining when they were late and being amenable and engaging”. She shouldn’t have needed to promote her ‘saveable’ qualities, which needs to be addressed as part of the issue of discrimination. She was also so incredibly brave, resilient and inspiring through both the sharing of her own experiences and her charitable and advocacy work.

Reflections on what actions might help to improve mental health outcomes for women?

Despite its saturation in discussions on mental health conditions, awareness remains a key strategy to allow women to take greater control. Without awareness of issues, women can’t problem solve their way through them, so it starts here with the collecting, reporting and communicating of issues.

Collective support: Women achieve outcomes through collective action and campaigns that unite them through a unified experience and message. Ironically, this is one way that social media contributes to improved health, but women need to use it to create connection rather than division. By coming together to support each other, women not only embrace a well-known mental health strategy of collective support, but they also increase their ability to influence decision-makers and enact meaningful change.

Finally, keep talking: Women need to feel proud of their increased use of mental health counselling services. Women know talking  therapy works, and they must keep supporting each other to access those services where professional support allows objectivity that can influence change and improve outcomes, especially during Women’s Health Week and beyond.