In India, women have the highest share of mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression. Numerous factors contribute to the deterioration of mental health in women. Dive into this article to understand what factors affect women's mental health.
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Biological Factors
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Are you wondering what biological factors affect mental health? Hormonal fluctuations in women are responsible for causing mood swings and depression. Women often experience surprising highs and lows due to hormonal imbalances. Some biological conditions that affect women's mental health are as follows:
- Menopause: Women are more likely to develop mental health issues during their menopausal age. The hormonal changes can lead to irritability and various physical challenges like irregular sleep patterns. All these factors contribute to degrading mental health.
- Pregnancy: Several pregnant women become familiar with depression and anxiety. Postpartum depression is common among several women within one year of delivery. Adjusting to the challenges of motherhood can also trigger anxiety. Women with records of mental health issues in the past are more likely to get them back during or after pregnancy.
- Infertility and Miscarriages: Women's mental health often starts degrading due to infertility and miscarriages. Losing the ability to become a parent can devastate a woman's mental and emotional well-being. Grief associated with such losses often goes unaddressed, leading to full-fledged emotional issues.
The overall genetic condition of women is also responsible for determining their mental health. Click here to know the importance of nutrition.
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Psychological Factors
A wide range of psychological factors impacts feminine mental health. If you are wondering what psychological factors affect mental health, you can consider coping mechanisms, personality traits, and more. Self-critical women often develop affective disorders like anxiety and depression.
Some women use coping mechanisms like substance abuse and alcohol consumption to deal with the complexities of life. These women suffer more from mental health complications and overall poor well-being. Some other psychological factors that can degrade a woman's mental health include negative self-perception, poor relationships with family and friends, and more.
Psychological factors can also include experiences of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse. Violence and abuse often trigger tendencies of self-harm and suicidal attempts. Women often stay in abusive relationships due to fear and the belief that they have no other option.
Post-traumatic stress disorder often occurs due to psychological impacts on a woman's mental health. Victims of abuse need to be reminded that they are not alone. They need to remember that they are not responsible for the behavior of the abusers.
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Social Factors
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To determine what social factors affect mental health, you should count on the feeling of loneliness. Isolation and lack of support from dear ones are some other social factors that affect mental health. The social factors associated with mental health often make women less productive at work.
Staying cut off from social interactions can increase the risk of anxiety and depression. Loneliness is also a key reason behind suicide attempts among women. It's a human tendency to stay away from social interactions while going through stressful situations.
However, receiving adequate social support can help human beings cope with complicated issues easily. Going out with friends or spending a day with family members might make us feel better. Never forget to check up on friends or relatives who are detaching themselves from social interactions.
Another social factor that leads to mental health issues in women is discrimination. Women are always equated to weak as opposed to their male counterparts. With society constantly posing restrictions on them, the feminine gender might not always have the spirit to fight and succumb to mental health issues at times.
From watching the male members getting favored at home and getting paid less at work, gender discrimination is prevalent everywhere. Women also face discrimination due to their caste, race, or ethnicity. Therefore, it's ten times harder for women from socially backward communities.
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Environmental Factors
You cannot neglect environmental factors while determining what triggers mental health issues in women. When you ask what environmental factors affect mental health, you will see that noise level is a major one.
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High noise levels can affect both the mental and physical health of women. It can negatively impact women from different backgrounds and age groups. Intolerable noise levels in the environment can raise blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormones.
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Cultural Factors
While analyzing what cultural factors affect mental health, you will realize that the media needs to be blamed. Popular culture has been glorifying unrealistic standards of living for a long time. For instance, you can consider fairness cream advertisements, beauty pageants, and more to blame for portraying negative beauty and body image perceptions.
Many women are conditioned while growing up that they need to maintain a certain body type to become desirable. Beauty has become synonymous with a fair complexion, certain digits on the weighing scale, and other preconceived notions from the bygone eras. The stigmatized concepts are making it hard for women to have space for self-acceptance in their lives.
They come under a lot of pressure to adjust to societal norms. A lack of self-confidence triggers a lot of mental health issues in women. Stress, depression, and anxiety are common among women due to cultural factors.
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Political Factors
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When you start looking for factors that affect women's mental health, political factors should also be taken into account. The answer to what political factors affect mental health will include the level of corruption, trade and tax policies, government health, and more. A country under war or an unstable political condition often has its citizens suffering from mental health issues.
In the past, men went to fight in wars, and women were left to manage homes. The stress of feeding their families under the deep political instability and the lurking uncertainty about whether the men would return home made women prey to mental health issues.
The Bottom Line
After understanding what factors influence mental health in women, it's necessary to find effective ways to deal with them. Seeking professional help and talking about what's bothering them is essential for women to recover from mental health problems.
