Rates of mental illness soaring in young women (Guardian article)

[MoominKitten]

Mental illness soaring amongst young women

Is anyone genuinely surprised by this? I am horrified but not surprised sadly.

The rise in PTSD (and how much prevalent it is in young women than young men) is particularly troubling I think.

Factors like sexual assault, childhood trauma and the rise of social media are cited in the article as being some of the factors at play. But what else is going, particularly given the disportionatenrise for young women.

Things that occur to me immediately are increased child poverty levels impacting in young adult life life, and the increased 'pornification' of society e.g. increased exposure to exploitative/violent/non-consensual images at a young age, increased likelihood of early sexual experiences containing porn influenced expectations of acts/behaviour/'performance.

Another factor that occurred to me was that it used to be more possible to foresee an "independent woman" route in life, but with high property costs in the U.K., young women increasingly feel that they have to be part of a couple to make ends meet/achieve life goals like buying a house etc. So they feel avenues are closed to them, given the continued pay gap.

This has really been playing on my mind the last few days, and I would like to discuss this in more depth. What is going on?

[TheSparrowhawk]

I don't think rates of MH issues are rising at all. Women have always suffered hideously and had MH issues as a result. The difference is that women aren't as willing to just accept it any more. IMO a lot of what is being labeled as poor mental health is actually a normal reaction to a world where women are raped in their millions.

The idea that women who had no access to education and were basically owned by their husbands, who could rape/beat them at will had better mental health than the women of today is just ludicrous.

[Felascloak]

It's very scary. Don't know what might be causing it, I think social media and nothe being able to get away from people might be contributing. I was quite badly bullied at school and hate to think how much worse that would have been with smart phones/social media. This could be a stereotype, but as I understand it girls get more emotional bullying than physical bullying, emotional bullying is much easier on social media.
I also think social media magnifies the expectation of girls looks, that can't help either.