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This book has two very clear aims; firstly, to present the most relevant up-to date data and factual evidence on women's mental health problems, causes and treatment; and secondly, to present recommended changes and alternatives for improving prevention and treatment of women's mental health problems. Its statement of intent is forthright and sets the scene for an aggressive discourse on a very pertinent feminist issue.
The book is divided into five sections, each of which begins with a concise well-referenced summary of the topic covered by the section followed by articles of opinion, theory or case history, and in three sections ending with a summary of practical comments as to how solutions might be found.
In Section One the issue of whether there is over-representation of women among the mentally ill is discussed. Psychoanalytic and biological/genetic explanations of why this might be so are rejected in favour of a combined model of external stress, internal psychological change and individual vulnerability. The authors are not attempting to equalise sex differences but by taking a sociocultural approach which emphasises demographic and stress factors in women's environment they are aiming to change the perspective, from which mental health problems may be viewed. In this section the prevalent disorders of women are identified as depression, agoraphobia, psychosomatic disorders in the genital/ reproductive tract, marital and family problems and eating disorders. Four factors affecting women's health are identified which form a recurrent theme throughout each section of the book: the socialisation process of women, the social status of women, discrimination against women and the biases that support inequality.
In the second section of the book the case for sexist treatment in the mental health system is examined. The five contributors here vary from a social psychology teacher to an ‘ex-psychiatric inmate, and very angry woman’. There is sexual bias in clinical judg