Editorial: Women in psychiatry 2022: social psychiatry and psychiatric rehabilitation

Full text

TYPE Editorial
PUBLISHED 06 June 2023
DOI 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1226513
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED AND REVIEWED BY
Antonio Vita,
University of Brescia, Italy
*CORRESPONDENCE
Helen Killaspy
h.killaspy@ucl.ac.uk
RECEIVED 21 May 2023
ACCEPTED 24 May 2023
PUBLISHED 06 June 2023
CITATION
Killaspy H and Mucci A (2023) Editorial: Women
in psychiatry 2022: social psychiatry and
psychiatric rehabilitation.
Front. Psychiatry 14:1226513.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1226513
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©2023 Killaspy and Mucci. This is an
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Editorial: Women in psychiatry
2022: social psychiatry and
psychiatric rehabilitation
Helen Killaspy1*and Armida Mucci2
1Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, United Kingdom, 2Specialisation School in
Psychiatry, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy
KEYWORDS
women, psychiatry, social, rehabilitation, mental health
Editorial on the Research Topic
Women in psychiatry 2022: social psychiatry and psychiatric rehabilitation
Frontiers in Psychiatry’s “Women in Psychiatry 2022” initiative aims to promote the
work of women scientists across all fields of psychiatry. This Research Topic on Social
Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation aimed to improve knowledge about the factors
influencing mental health outcomes for women, particularly those with more complex
mental health problems. We encouraged submissions reporting on studies investigating
the relationship between social and psychological factors affecting women’s mental health,
studies evaluating services or interventions that focus on those with more complex mental
health problems, as well as studies investigating the representation of female academics
working in this field. Given this fairly broad scope, the papers we included provide an
interesting and, perhaps somewhat eclectic, range of subjects.
Two of our included studies investigated whether gender influenced outcomes for people
using longer term psychiatric facilities. Rusakovskaya et al. compared social and every day
functioning of male and female residents of mental health institutions based in three regions
of Russia. Other than gender, participants were similar in sociodemographic characteristics,
all had a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia and, on average, they had been living in the
facility for over 7 years. The results showed that female residents performed better than their
male counterparts on all domains of social and everyday functioning, corroborating previous
studies that have identified a poorer prognosis, particularly in regard to functioning, for men
diagnosed with schizophrenia. A number of possible explanations for this have been put
forward including the earlier age and more insidious onset of the illness amongst males.
In Milan, Italy, Cafaro et al. investigated outcomes for people with severe mental illness
who participated in an intensive, residential psychiatric rehabilitation program. Males and
females had similar diagnostic profiles and scored similarly on ratings of symptoms and
functioning at entry to the program. The study found that women were more likely than
men to be discharged to independent accommodation, despite having a longer duration of
untreated illness. However, they were less likely to have a substance use disorder, which may,
in part, explain their better outcomes.
Women have a reputation for being adaptable, as evidenced by Özümerzifon et al. who
reported on the feasibility and potential benefits of a virtual dance/movement program
conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic for survivors of intimate partner violence. The
intervention was originally planned as an in-person program but had to move to an on-line
format due to the social distancing restrictions of the pandemic. Nevertheless, 45 women
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Killaspy and Mucci 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1226513
were recruited and randomized and offered either 12 sessions of
the program or usual care. The intervention was well received and
those who participated in the dance/movement sessions reported
improvements in wellbeing and symptoms such as anxiety and
post-traumatic stress, as well as benefits from having regular
contact with peers.
Moving the focus to women academics, Trimmel et al.
investigated the gender of first authors of papers published in
three high-impact psychiatry journals over 15 years (from 2004 to
2019). During this period, the percentage of female first authors
of papers focusing on the most common three target populations
(people with mood disorders, schizophrenia or general mental
health problems) increased but male first authors remained in the
majority. However, in 2019, over 50% of all original research articles
had a female first author and in the two most commonly published
psychiatric research fields (biological research and psychosocial
epidemiology), the percentage of female first authors was over 50%.
These findings suggest that gender equality amongst academics in
the mental health field is improving but there is still some way
to go. This Research Topic also includes a perspective review by
Rexhaj et al. of the literature on caregivers. In keeping with previous
research, they identified that around two-thirds of informal care
givers are female. Perhaps it is not surprising therefore, that they
also found that women academics were more likely than their male
counterparts to research in this area.
This overlap between the personal and professional identities of
female academics was the focus of the final paper in our Topic—
a fascinating study by and Roszik-Volovik et al. who report on
how, in the midst of the influx of refugees into Hungary caused
by the war in Ukraine, the all female Research Group of Childhood
Mental Health, based at Eötvös Loránd University and Semmelweis
University in Budapest, transformed itself into a support resource
for refugee families. They provided playgroups and activities for
the children, many of whom were traumatized by their experiences
in Ukraine, that facilitated opportunities for discussions with their
parents and specialist advice where needed, and enabled social
relationships to form between the refugee families. The experiences
of the research group were later evaluated through focus groups,
providing insights into the stress of the situation and the process of
merging of personal and professional boundaries during this awful
and extraordinary moment in history.
We hope you will enjoy reading this collection of papers and,
for those of you who are women academics in this or a related field,
we hope they provide some inspiration for your own research.
Author contributions
All authors contributed to this editorial and agreed the final
version for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted
in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships
that could be construed as a potential conflict
of interest.
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