Chapter 2: Enabling children, girls and women to live their lives to the fullest
Emotional health and wellbeing
As children transition into their adolescent years (also known as teenage years), and then into adulthood, each developmental stage has its own levels of stress and anxiety. Change is rapid alongside exposures to new risk factors including physical changes, peer pressure, educational stress, and sexual exploration. (Campbell OLK, Bann D and Patalay P (2021). The gender gap in adolescent mental health: A cross-national investigation of 566,829 adolescents across 73 countries. SSM Popul Health. 13:100742)
Adolescence is a time when emotional disorders emerge, and 1 in 5 adolescents may experience a mental health problem in any given year. It is also a time when the gender gap in mental health happens. (World Health Organization. (2020). Adolescent mental health)
Mental health is a state of wellbeing that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to their community.
It is an integral component of health and wellbeing that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationship and shape the world we live. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.
Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.
World Health Organization. (2020). Adolescent mental health.)
Whilst mental illness is often diagnosed in adulthood, it usually begins in adolescent years: (World Health Organization. (2020). Adolescent mental health.)
- Half of all mental health problems are established by age 14 years
- Three-quarters of all mental health problems are established by age 24 years
- 1 in 10 children and young people aged 5 to16 years have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem
The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, the biggest survey of mental health disorder and treatment in England, has found that women are more likely to have mental health problems than men, with young women at particularly high risk. (Gulland A. (2016). Women have higher rates of mental disorders than men, NHS survey finds. BMJ. 354:i5320)
Women are three times more likely than men to experience common mental health problems. (Mental Health Foundation (2022). Men and women: statistics)
- Women are more than 3 times as likely to experience eating disorders than men.
- Young women are 3 times more likely than young men to experience post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Young women are more likely to experience anxiety-related conditions than any other group