1. Introduction:
Most people search for the women’s mental health month in order to celebrate as the month of disseminating awareness and mental health growth campaigns locally and globally. Women’s mental health has become a prime topic that need to be cherished even every month as their problems are quited differed from men in the context of depression, domestic and work-related anxieties, post partum depression and hormonal fluctuations.
However, women’s mental health month prioritizes for individuals for investing all their energies in the right directions with the stakeholders including healthcare providers, educational institutions, governmental and non-governmental campaigns and necessary interventions for making common men get notified about the women’s mental health month and its significance.
2. Historical Leaflets of Observing When is Women’s Mental Health Awareness Month:
Women’s mental health month first started to be observed every May since 1949. Its aim was to enlighten the world regarding women’s mental, psychological and biological health. The celebration initiated in the first week of May where it solely focused on postpartum depression and perinatal and postnatal care. Together all these events make May the strongest month for women’s mental health month advocacy.
3. Reasons When Women’s Mental Health Awareness Month To Be Celebrated:
Women’s mental health month is the way to highlight the issues women are facing in the fast-pacing world of capitalism and its by-product especially corporate world where females are being burdened with unrealistic expectations to be carried out. Such insensitivities have cluttered the masculinity with boosting egos and comparing women as physically and biologically strong as men. Some of the reasons of highlighting of women’s health health month awareness are:
3.1. Pinpointing Rising Unique Challenges of Women’s Mental Health:
Women’s mental health month does not only celebrate biological aspects of women’s suffering, but also reiterates socio-cultural factors including coercion from in-laws and husbands, gender-based violence, care-giving burdens that directly or indirectly women overall well-being.
3.2. Emphasizing Gender-Specific Reseaarch:
Women’s mental health month also highlights the flaws and gaps of academia. Academia is mostly focused on the burning issues where domestic issues and conflicts with in-laws never get reported. In this way, the data extracted are mostly twisted and are full of tweaks. Authenticity of the problem gets murky.
These issues impact women’s psychological well-being as they are in constant pressure of being the caretaker of the house and tending children. Such interminable trail of expectations are nothing but a vicious cycle that have brutally strangled women as whole.
3.3. Bolstering Women to Prioritize Self-Care:
Amidst these turmoils, women forget to breathe in an open air of domesticity and work c. However, women’s mental health month encourages women to celebrate themselves daily as a top-notch duty where they draw certain boundaries in the realms of their personal and professional spaces.
| Women’s Mental Health Month 2025 | |
| May 1 till May 31, 2025 | Mental Health Awarenes Month |
| May 1 till May 31, 2025 | Women’s Health Month |
| May 5 till May 11, 2025 | Maternal Mental Health Week |
| May 8, 2025 | World Maternal Mental Health Day |
| October 10, 2025 | World Mental Health Day |
4. Why Women’s Mental Health Month Deserves to be Highly Focused:
According to World Health Organization, 2023 report, “Women are likely to suffer major bouts of depression compared to men”.
Women’s mental health month deserves special attention as every phase in women’s life has certain setback due to its psychological, emotional and biological makeup. Coupled with the range of disorders, societal pressures and gender inequalities worsen the overall well-being.
Women’s mental health does not propel major stakeholders to treat prevailing mental ailments, it spreads empathy and compassion towards dealing with such adversity that has become an epidemic now.
Healthy family units, stronger communities and societal progress serve as primary drivers of women’s mental health. Childbirth and then their rearing leave a toll on women’s physical and psychological health. Unfortunately, according to Amercian Psychological Association, 2024, 1 in 7 women remain undiagnosed in their perinatal mood disorders.
5. Global Perspective of Women’s Mental Health Month Awareness:
Women’s mental health month awareness does not confine to only localized culture, but also global eye too.
In developed nations, initiatives during women’s mental health month focus on reducing stigma, ameliorating access to mental health therapies, and supporting workplace mental health policies.
United States celebrates May as both Women’s Mental Health Month and Women’s Health Month.
United Kingdom focuses on Maternal Mental Health Week includes charities and mental health alliance programs.
North America and Europe are actively working on integation of mental health in workplaces and maternal health care.
Asia and Africa are being at the backward positions in terms of inadequate funding and cultural compactness. Due to patriarchal clutches, women are still kept aside and these women are suffering.
Global collaboration including World Health Organization, UN Women, and local NGOs are working for the causes. Still, these organizations are failing at penetrating in the countries’ where women are bearing the brunt of being women. Here, women are being conditioned in such a way that they are normalizing these misconducts by men. For such women, even women mental health month is just a mere cliché. The root cause of such failures is extreme poverty that these women are living at the mercy of their demi-gods i.e. husbands and in-laws.
6. Localized Key Mental Health hotlines and Support Services in Pakistan:
There are several organizations in Pakistan which are actively working for bridging the gap between the existing supporting services and women at the community levels. Some of the services are mentioned below;
| Organization | Nature of Service Offered | Contact Details |
| Taskeen Health Initiative | Awareness campaigns/counselling and therapy sessions | info@taskeen.org |
| Rozan Counselling (Tele Health) | Tele-councelling for women in remote areas | helpline@rozan.org 0800-22-444 |
| Talk2Heal | Online psychological Counselling (Urdu and English Preference Included) | www.talk2heal.com |
7. Evidence-Based Strategies to Support Women’s Mental Health:
- Psychotheraphy and Counseling: It can help women to rethink and reevaluate their negative patterns.
- Interpersonal Therapy: It can help women who are going through postpartum depression phase. As a result, these women also encounter series of relationship stress crisis. Services under interpersonal therapy provide greater access especially in underpriviledged areas.
- Meditation: Mindful activities help women to control the disturbing breathing patterns. Yoga and meditation help them to focus and enhance their mental regulation.
- Community Programs: Community programs or women support groups working create safe spaces for vulnerable women so that they can vent out their struggles with the professionals. Such support groups normalize the phenomenon “asking psychological and emotional help is still normal” a new normal. These activites do not depend on Women’s Mental Health Month to carry out activites, but, for them, every day is Women’s Mental Health Month.
- Nutrition and Lifestyle Interventions: Balanced diet and apt sleeping pattern is the pivotal factor in sustaining normal living.
- Policy and Educational Support: awareness must be run against the stigma attached in shcools and workplaces related to women’s mental health.
- Workplace policies: Workplace policies must be flexible enough to cater women’s mental health fluctuations. They should not be dealt with hard fist but with compassion. In such cases, women must be allotted with leaves so that they can get enough rest. Workplaces and educational insitutions must be equipped with psychological units for providing counselling therapies.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. Why does women’s mental health month highlight?
Ans. It aims at highlighting the prime issues of women struggling at workplaces, homes, and educational realms. It comes up with the handy solutions in order to curb this rising disease. It needs to be catered timely, otherwise, society will bear the brunt as a whole.
Q. What if one fails to consult doctors or therapies?
Ans. Its answer is not that simple. One has to be very much aware about his/her situation. One must know how to listen to bodily reactions. We have to be on toes if sense something weird or abnormal about the person. Despite being resenting towards him/her, we need to extend our shoulder or atleast lend our ears to listen to their concerns.