Overview Why Gender Matters in Mental Health NIMH's strategic plan aims to reduce the public health burden of mental disorders. The Women's Mental Health Consortium seeks to ensure that NIMH policy and research priorities reflect concerns and research specific to the mental health needs of women as well as men. In epidemiological studies, whether one is male or female consistently emerges as one of the statistically strongest demographic correlates of risk for different types of mental illnesses.
Women are the major consumers of treatments and services for mental illnesses.
Women's mental health affects others in society. Their increasing presence in the workforce means that their mental health affects national productivity. Their social role as caregivers means that their mental health affects the mental health of their children and elderly parents. Yet scientific approaches to women's mental health have often focused only on the social level or on reproductive issues, and have failed to ask how gender differences are related to basic and clinical biological processes and factors in mental disorders. The Consortium is changing this focus.