May 2024

The Mental Health Issue

As women, we’re more likely to experience depression, anxiety, PTSD, panic attacks and eating disorders. As millennial women, we’ve witnessed an increased discourse on mental health, leading to progress in destigmatizing these experiences. Yet, mental illness continues to run rampant among women and modern mothers.

Awareness is a refreshing and much appreciated breeze, but far from the hurricane winds needed to take down systematic failures, traumas endured, genetics, racial disparities, unrealistic societal expectations and unavoidable hormonal rollercoasters embedded in our lifetimes.

In a conversation with our May Woman Who Went For It, Leslie Forde, she shared a hard but important truth when it comes to our stress levels and mental health: big system answers and policy changes aren’t coming any time soon. If we want to lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives now — Forde says we have to look for realistic, small interventions to protect our mental health and learn how to implement them. And the conversations that we’ve seen increase must continue. Regardless of the cause, mental illness can be a deeply isolating experience — a frustrating and inescapable fight within yourself. Every honest conversation and experience bravely shared are potential lifelines.

We’ll always cover mental health in our content, but this month it’s front and center. We’re exploring lessons learned from years of anxiety, how to find a therapist and why time freedom is essential to our mental health. You can read more about Forde’s work and a quiet mental health crisis: women staying in unhappy marriages, plus a therapist share what she learned during an experience of heightened anxiety and depression. Let’s keep the conversations going.