What unique mental health challenges do women face?
Emotional Wellbeing | Women's Mental Health
Counsellor: Sylvie
Published: 30 Mar 2026

What unique mental health challenges do women face?

Women's mental health challenges can arise from gender-specific factors, although it is not accurate to say that males or the LGBTQ societies do not experience these in life.

One, hormonal transitions during life such as puberty, pregnancy and post-birth periods, and perimenopause and menopause.

So in these periods of time we can struggle with managing our emotions and our identity changes, not just those internal processes, but also how others respond to our changes.

Many young women, for example, are under pressure from adolescence onwards to behave, lurk and show up in a certain way, mostly dictated by societal expectations.

All women at all ages experience feelings of vulnerability and fear.

So do you feel safe to walk down a dark street at night?

Do you think this is more prevalent in women?

Men can also feel unsafe to be clear, how strong and well trained you are to deal with danger will be more important of a factor than gender in some circumstances.

Mothers, while juggling massive hormone shifts during pregnancy and afterwards, quite often experience not being good enough mother or having imposter syndrome, and this huge life shift can also increase chances of depression and anxiety, particularly postnatal depression.

And then we can think about going back to work after such changes, where we're presented with a new role, lack of confidence, getting back into a routine, and also again manoeuvring our colleagues' attitudes towards us as we come back as a mother in some cases.

So perimenopause and menopause unfortunately does bring with it issues for mental health, and the Office for National Statistics show that the highest suicide rate among women is for those aged from 55 to 59, and this study was published in 2024.

Women often juggle caregiving responsibilities, career and societal expectations.

Another study carried out by the Cambridge University Press in 2025 showed that 43% of female executives experienced burnout compared to 31% of their male counterparts at work.

So women are also highly susceptible to trauma and PTSD as a result of higher exposure to domestic violence and increased feelings of sexual vulnerability.

So the statement follows Women have a disproportionate burden of mental ill health, they live longer than men, yet spend more years in poor health, with many years lived with disability attributable to mental health disorders, and this is according to the research by global burden of disease, injuries, and the risk factors study 2019.

This subject area is so vast, so I do encourage you to look at your own research.

I haven't even mentioned that most studies of neurodiversity have been carried out on males, so a high proportion of undiagnosed ADHD autism cases are present in women.

Women can present differently to men and become adept at masking, so that's why many are not diagnosed until her forties.

Living with undiagnosed neurodiverse condition is a factor contributing to high depression and anxiety amongst women today.

I hope that this information has been helpful and it's such a big subject.

If you are experiencing depression or anxiety, regardless of what stage you are in life, please do reach out so you're not on your own.

Call Samaritans on 116.123 or reach out to speak to a doctor, especially if you suspect that hormonal issues are a factor.

Call the NHS on 111 option 2 for mental health.

Please take care.