I write the editorial for Volume 40:3 of Health care for Women International during a difficult time in my life. A week ago, there was a shooting in a Synagogue where a congregation was celebrating the end of Passover. An elderly woman was killed. We learned, from newspapers more about the life of the young assailant, than we did of this woman’s life although given her life span, there are certainly reportable events other than how she died. Earlier this week there occurred a mass shooting in a classroom on a nearby college campus. Two students were killed, and others were injured. Two days before, my relative chose to end his life by shooting himself, a personal tragedy for those who knew him, but especially for his wife and children. These events are becoming commonplace, in the United States as they have been elsewhere. It is reasonable to expect that those who survive these events will need mental health intervention as it is reasonable to assume that perpetrators of such acts needed help they didn’t receive. I ask, what about the rest of us who seem to have become numb to these events? Numbness is a mechanism to cope with chaos in our midst in association with the devaluation of human life.
It is now the beginning of May 2019, the start of “Mental Health Awareness “Month” in the United States. Rather than being gladdened that a month has been given this name, I am saddened that mental health is seen as so insignificant that some members of the media act as if mental health is something to cover in only one month, while violence is profiled daily. I wonder about the impact of media coverage informing the public of a shortage of mental health providers. Today I read, some immediate counseling is provided to survivors of trauma, but the wait to obtain appointments with counselors who can help people long-term, may be several months and not available at all to those without personal funds.
Of course, as an editor, I am “of the media”, so I am reflecting as well on the job I do. The articles published here take up one month of space in our journal this year. It is a coincidence that the articles we selected for this issue appear at this time, but Managing Editor, Elizabeth Fugate-Whitlock and I did plan to publish a group of research articles by authors who call attention to global mental health issues of women. Is this a mistake?
Shining a spotlight on research related to mental health should be important. As academics and as researchers we tell one another we have the potential to provide data. Some of us are positivists who might claim that what we publish will inspire others, as if the data or figures will jump off the page to act. Those who read this journal know that I frown on such anthropomorphism. If anyone is inspired to act after reading our research, it is the researchers who will be the catalysts. If, however, most read only abstracts or titles that appear as lines on curriculum vita, we will have accomplished little.
In this issue a range of situations are examined, all of which result in stress, but not all of which require formal mental health intervention. Indeed, McManimen and colleagues argue that the referral of women to psychiatrists who seek help for chronic physical illnesses is dismissive and inappropriate. The Giarratano research team was informed by women who were pregnant during a natural disaster. The team was told that what the women needed the most was social support in the form of food and housing assistance, but support dwindled quickly in few months after the disaster. It is this kind of support rather than therapy that was most needed. Place and colleagues who worked with Guatemalan women who had been raped also highlighted the need for social support in addition to competent medical intervention. Khezeli and colleagues interviewed women who had attempted suicide in Iran and found that they too lacked the support they needed to cope with physical illnesses and social problems. While suicide seemed like a way to escape problems, this view emerged in the presence of unmet needs. In another Iranian study, Jalali and Hashemi report that emotional stress experienced upon release from prison can be lessened by providing women with life skills training over a nine-week period. The pretest/posttest design allows researchers to conclude the training to women in groups is helpful, but it will take another study to learn whether the results will be sustained over time. Finally, Pia Keiski and colleagues in Finland created a group intervention for women who were the perpetrators of family violence, providing information to participants on triggers and prevention of violence. I suspect some of the effectiveness of group interventions is the result of social support provided by participants to one another.
It is difficult for me to sustain an attitude that what we publish is meaningful especially when surrounded by obvious mental distress. Please read and learn. If able, take action to combat the numbness!
Editor-in-Chief
May 3, 2019
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