Common Mental Health with women in 2017

Some 1 in 5 American adults will experience a mental illness during his or her lifetime, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but men and women are prone to different disorders. In a study published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Abnormal Psychology, researchers found that men are more likely to develop substance abuse and antisocial problems, while women lean more toward anxiety and depression, among other mental health issues.

Anxiety
​From puberty through age 50, women are more than twice as likely as men to develop an anxiety disorder, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, with its symptoms of increased worrying, tension, exhaustion, and fear.
Again, so many factors come into play—including social and cultural norms and stressors, but how we react to them may be the biggest difference between men and women. That's the key finding of a 2012 study in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Abnormal Psychology: Men tend to externalize emotions while women tend to internalize them.
Biology plays a role, too, of course, and researchers are increasingly looking at the effects of estradiol, a primary gonadal hormone in women. "It is thought to mediate, or be responsible for, some of the sex differences observed in psychiatric disorders," explains Tamar Gur, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health, neuroscience, obstetrics, and gynecology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Depression
​Some 10 to 15% of women will experience depression at some point in their lives—double the number of men who will. "Women go through significant biological changes across their lifespan, more so than men, so these cyclic shifts can disrupt, malfunction, or create disease," Serani explains.
Hormonal flux in particular can wreak havoc on women's mental health. "Hormones play a significant role around the time of childbirth, which has resulted in terms like postpartum blues and postpartum depression," says Jared Heathman, MD, a family psychiatrist in Houston, Texas. Women can also develop premenstrual dysphoric disorder. "Symptoms of PMDD are similar to major depressive disorder, so it's likely that some physicians label PMDD as MDD," Heathman says. "Their acronyms are even similar."