Panelists to Discuss Strategies to Protect Women’s MH

Recent legal and policy changes, especially those that deny women and girls autonomy over their own bodies, have adversely impacted the mental health of women and girls across the country. These policies have also taken a toll on psychiatrists and their colleagues, who are continuing to provide care to these patients. These challenges will be discussed in detail at APA’s 2023 Annual Meeting in the session titled “Promoting Women’s Mental Health in a Difficult Environment: Current Challenges in the United States.”

“The central theme in many of these policy developments is denial of individual sovereignty over the body and personal control in the most intimate aspects of life,” said Evan Eyler, M.D., Ph.D., the session’s chair and a professor of psychiatry at the Robert Larner, M.D., College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. “That manifests in a wide variety of misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ policies and practices that very negatively impact our patients and make psychiatric practice more difficult and emotionally challenging.”

The presenters include Carole Warshaw, M.D., director of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health; Leslie Gise, M.D., a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii; and Amanda Koire, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical fellow in psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The presenters will detail what patients across the country are experiencing, including being forced or coerced into carrying a pregnancy to term and being forced to experience masculinizing puberty for transgender girls. Gise and Warshaw will also address climate and disaster policies that place women and girls particularly in jeopardy, as well as policies within the legal system that allow stigma associated with substance use and mental illness to be leveraged against women by abusive partners. Finally, the presenters will outline the many policies that disproportionately impact women from Indigenous, Latinx, and Black communities.

The presenters will also provide an opportunity for participants to discuss how these issues are coming up in their own lives and work and the strategies they are employing to maintain their own well-being.

“This session will provide a setting in which psychiatrists can collaborate on strategies to address these crucial developments, problem solve, and offer mutual acknowledgement and support,” Eyler said. ■