Service Responses to Women with Mental Health Needs
| Published date | 01 March 2002 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200200003 |
| Pages | 6-14 |
| Date | 01 March 2002 |
| Author | Jennie Williams,Sara Scott |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Service Responses to Women with Mental
Health Needs
Jennie Williams
Senior Lecturer in Mental Health
Tizard Centre
University of Kent
Sara Scott
Principal Research Officer
Barnado’s
Framework feature
Introduction
There are individual mental health professionals who
respond to women with mental health needs with
warmth and intelligence; staff whose practice is anti-
oppressive and fully cognisant of the impacts of
poverty, domestic violence and racism upon their
patients’ lives; and there are doctors, nurses and thera-
pists who work in solidarity with the women in their
care and who fully appreciate their practical and
emotional struggles. However, only a handful of
mental health services could be described in such
terms. Most services fail to provide the support and
safety women with mental health needs require and
many routinely demean women, dismiss their distress
and replicate the dynamics of abuse and exclusion that
have characterised their previous lives. This article
suggests we have reached a turning point in Britain in
relation to mental health service provision for women.
Not only is there considerable evidence of an associa-
tion between women’s social experience and their
mental health, but this association is also acknowl-
edged by the majority of mental health workers. Many
staff also recognise that the professional training they
received provided them with a wholly inadequate
preparation for engaging helpfully with their patients.
As individuals some have abandoned the medical
paradigm altogether and no longer ask ‘What is wrong
with this woman?’ but rather ‘What has happened to
this woman?’
In this paper we draw upon evidence from a range
of sources to explore these issues, including some of
the work we have ourselves carried out in the last two
years.
Particularly relevant in this context is information
gathered as part of a national programme to develop
and pilot training for staff in secure services who work
with women with mental health needs (Scott & Parry-
Crooke, 2001).
As part of the training needs assessment phase of
this programme, data was collected by questionnaire
from 63 multi-disciplinary staff and through interviews
with 60 staff in six secure services. We also draw upon
findings from a recent survey (Williams et al, 2001a) of
attitudes to mental health services for women, which
was carried out to inform the Mental Health Strategy
for Women currently being developed by the
Department of Health.
Women’s mental health needs
There is now a wealth of evidence that points to the
inappropriateness of discussing women’s mental
health problems in terms of individual pathology. It is
both more accurate and useful to conceptualise
women’s mental problems as responses to – and
sometimes as creative ways of coping with – damaging
experiences that are rooted in their lived experiences
of inequality and abuse of power.
We shall summarise some of the evidence that
supports this conclusion, noting at the outset that
while gender inequality is of obvious significance,
other dimensions of social inequality including, race,
class, age and disability assume particular importance
in the lives of many women who use mental health
services.
6The Mental Health Review Volume 7 Issue 1 March 2002 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 2002
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