Why women's mental health should always take priority

Early intervention improves outcomes for conditions including depression

- BAVI VYTHLINGUM

WOMEN’S physical and emotional wellbeing forms the cornerstone of healthy communities.

Despite significant advances in medical science, a troubling global trend is emerging that threatens this foundation and undermines the professional care many women rely on.

Women's health is everybody's health, and when women and girls are well-supported, mental wellbeing improves across families and society. When a mother, partner, or daughter is struggling, it has a ripple effect on the whole family’s happiness and stability.

Women experience additional mental health burdens at every stage of life that men cannot fully empathise with, and traditionally girls and women have had to bear significant struggles in silence.

Today, we have empirical evidence of the abrupt hormonal and physical changes that occur when girls start menstruating, during pregnancy, through the childbearing years to perimenopause, menopause and into our senior years.

These transitional phases may lead to times of heightened mental health risk which need to be managed for affected women.