A Public Health Perspective of Women’s Mental Health

A Public Health Perspective of Women’s Mental Health

Edited by Bruce Lubotsky Levin and Marion Ann Becker

As many as one-half of all women in the U.S. will experience some form of mental illness in their lives—an especially distressing fact when health care budgets are in flux, adding to existing disparities and unmet health needs.

Written from a unique multidisciplinary framework, A Public Health Perspective of Women’s Mental Health addresses today’s most pressing mental health challenges: effective treatment, efficient prevention, equal access, improved service delivery, and stronger public policy. Eminent clinicians, researchers, academicians, and advocates examine the effects of mental illness on women’s lives and discuss the scope of clinical and service delivery issues affecting women, focusing on these major areas:

• Epidemiology of mental disorders in girls, female adolescents, adult women, and older women.
• Selected disorders of particular concern to women, including depression and postpartum depression, eating disorders, menopause, chemical dependence, and HIV/AIDS.
• Mental health needs of women in the workplace, rural areas, and prisons.
• Racial and ethnic disparities and their impact on service delivery.
• Parenting and recovery issues in mothers with mental illness.
• Women’s mental health services in an era of evidence-based medicine.
• Improving women’s health in today’s technological climate.

A Public Health Perspective of Women’s Mental Health is a resource of immediate importance to professionals and graduate students in the public health, health administration, health disparities, social work, behavioral health, and health services research fields, as well as nursing, community/health psychology and community/public psychiatry.

• Depression
• Prevention
• Public Health
• Stress
• behavioral health
• health psychology
• health services research
• managed care
• mental health care
• psychiatry
• women’s health

From the reviews:

"The book by Levin and Becker entitled A Public Health Perspective on Women’s Mental Health will become a primary source for everyone interested in women’s issues. It is a comprehensive and unique overview on all aspects of this rapidly changing area. It is equally useful for both clinicians and policy makers, and provides detailed insight into issues that are often treated with a summary overview. 

This book includes a review of the epidemiology of women’s medical and mental disorders throughout the life span and current information on obvious areas of interest, including eating disorders and depression. It also includes a public health perspective on issues less automatically thought about from a female perspective, including HIV/AIDS, epidemiology of incarceration, managed care organizations, substance use, and menopause. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the health and mental health of women."

Ronald J Diamond M.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin

"This timely resource offers a holistic examination of one of the most troubling failures of our health system – the persistent denial of mental health as a critical component of health – while also contributing to the growing body of evidence on the importance of women’s health, not only to women themselves, but to the safety and security of their families, communities, and society at large.  Bravo to Drs. Levin & Becker for tackling this head on in a thorough, elegant, and straightforward manner.  This book needs to be in the hands of every graduate student, educator, and professional interested in improving health locally and globally".Donna J. Petersen, MHS, ScD, Professor & Dean, College of Public Health, University of South Florida

“Current literature regarding women’s mental health services generally comes from a clinical and/or biomedical perspective. This volume’s approach is to examine the need for mental health services and the effect of mental disorders in women’s daily lives. … The collection emphasizes the importance of establishing a public health perspective for the study of women’s mental health via an interdisciplinary framework to support future research and policy. … Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and up.” (M. L. Charleroy, Choice, Vol. 48 (5), January, 2011)

“A Public Health Perspective of Women’s Mental Health fills a void in the literature discovered while Dr. Becker was teaching graduate students–no text dealt directly with mental disorders among women from a public health perspective, and one was sorely needed. … The data presented in this book help plug the gap in knowledge and give ideas for emerging opportunities for women’s health. … it is a wonderful compilation of data from two editors who are champions for policy on women’s mental health.”­­­ (Linda B. Cottler, The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, Vol. 37 (4), October, 2010)

• Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, U.S.A.

  Bruce Lubotsky Levin

• Dept. Mental Health Law & Policy, University of South Florida, Tampa, U.S.A.

  Marion Ann Becker

Bruce Lubotsky Levin, DrPH, MPH

Bruce Lubotsky Levin is Associate Professor and Head of the Graduate Studies in Behavioral Health Program at the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute & at the College of Public Health (COPH), both at the University of South Florida (USF). Dr. Levin is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research and Director of the USF Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Planning, Evaluation, & Accountability Program. He is the Senior Editor of Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective, Third Edition (Oxford University Press, 2010); Introduction to Public Health for Pharmacists (Jones & Bartlett, 2007); Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2004); Women’s Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective (Sage Publications, 1998); and Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1996). He is also Co-Editor of the text Building a Virtual Library (Information Science Publishing, 2003). In 2001, Dr. Levin received the Harold C. Piepenbrink Award for outstanding contributions to behavioral health services from the Association of Behavioral Healthcare Management. Dr. Levin earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his graduate degrees from The University of Texas. His research interests include managed behavioral health care, mental health policy, graduate behavioral health education, and mental health informatics. He currently teaches graduate behavioral health courses at the USF COPH.

Marion Ann Becker, PhD, MA, RN

Marion Becker is a Professor in the Department of Aging and Mental Health Disparities at the University of South Florida (USF) Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute. She also holds appointments in the USF School of Social Work, USF College of Public Health, and USF College of Nursing, where she teaches a number of graduate level courses, including the epidemiology of mental disorders, women’s mental health, and case management. Dr. Becker is a psychiatric nurse with a doctorate in Social Welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the problems of providing high quality, cost-effective behavioral health services and quality of life outcomes for vulnerable populations. Dr. Becker is the developer of the Wisconsin Quality of Life Index (W-QLI), a core development in quality of life outcomes research in mental health. In 1997, she received the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Research Award for her quality of life outcomes research. Dr. Becker has served as Principle Investigator and Co-Principle Investigator on numerous outcome studies. Most recently, she served as Co-Principle Investigator and Lead Evaluator for the Triad Women's Project, a multi-million dollar competitive federal grant designed to create and evaluate specialized interventions for women with alcohol, drug abuse, and mental disorders who have histories of interpersonal violence. Dr. Becker continues her research focus on women’s mental health, quality of life outcomes across the life span, and linking outcomes research to clinical practice.

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