The Correlation Between Psychiatric Disorders and Women's Lives

Psychiatric disorders are important factors which affect the quality of life: employment rates, interpersonal and intrafamilial communications, marriage, child-bearing, parental skills and many other social - cognitive areas in different ways. Psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and depressive disorder have a negative impact on women's lives. This study has compared the relationship between these mental illnesses and the liabilities of women's lives.

For the purpose of this study, 61 schizophrenics, 35 bipolar and 40 unipolar female patients and 60 healthy controls from a university hospital of eastern Turkey were evaluated with SCID- I, a family environmental scale and a personal information questionnaire.

The women with psychiatric disorders had higher rates of unemployment, shorter durations of marriage and lower numbers of parity, as compared to their healthy counterparts, especially after the onset of their illnesses. The schizophrenia and bipolar groups are at risk due to the psychotropic medications which they take during pregnancy. The onset or the exacerbations of illnesses during the postpartum period are also seen more in the schizophrenia and the bipolar groups. However, the patients did not use medicines more than the healthy controls during lactation. The schizophrenia and bipolar groups seem to be failing in using reliable methods of contraception. This data is important due to the traditional and the socio-economical structure of eastern Turkey, which may interrelate with the results.

Women have to play various roles in life and they have various challenges which are related to these roles. The female psychiatric patients should be evaluated in the special perspective of 'being women', along with other clinical parameters. The evaluation of the social, cultural and the economic aspects and the collaborative teams of different clinical disciplines which are related to women's mental health would be beneficial.