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Women's Issues
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Women Who Cohabit Have Daughters Who Do Likewise
Nov 1, 2005
New research shows that young adult women whose mothers reported cohabitation were 57 percent more likely than other women to report cohabitation themselves. In addition, daughters of cohabiting mothers tended to cohabit at earlier ages than others.
"Women tend to model the behavior of their mothers when it comes to relationships," said Leanna Mellott, co-author of the study. Mellott described this study as just the first step in trying to determine how living together outside marriage may affect children who grow up in such an environment. "We need to further study both the number and type of relationship transitions - such as divorce or cohabiting - for mothers and their children," Mellott said.
The likelihood that sons would cohabit was not affected by whether their mothers lived with a man outside marriage, but there were other effects: sons were more likely to cohabit if their mothers were divorced or had their first child at an early age.
While there has been a lot of research on how divorce affects children, this is one of few studies on the impact of cohabitation, said Zhenchao Qian, another co-author and associate professor of sociology at Ohio State.
More than one-third of all births in the United States in 2003 were to unmarried women. "As more people enter into cohabiting relationships and have children, we have to recognize that this could have long-term effects on these children as they enter adulthood," Qian said.
Mellott presented the team's findings Aug. 16 in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Data for the study came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative survey of people nationwide conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research. Men and women aged 14 to 22 in 1979 were interviewed annually from 1979 to 1994, and once every two years from 1996 forward. The NLSY also interviewed these participants' children.
The researchers noted that the strong effects of cohabitation on adult children were consistent, even after taking into account factors such as race, education, and poverty, which all have their own strong links to cohabitation.
Other results of the study showed that young Black men were about 35 percent less likely than white men to report cohabitation, while Black women were 90 percent less likely to have cohabited than their white counterparts.
Education was another important factor, with higher levels of schooling consistently linked to lower levels of living together outside of marriage.
Young adults' relationships were also affected by the stability of their mothers' relationships, the study showed. Each relationship transition for the mothers - including divorce, widowhood or new cohabitation -- increased the likelihood of cohabitation by 32 percent for their sons, and 42 percent for their daughters.
The study is not available on the web.
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Alcohol Affects Women Worse
June 6, 2005
Far more research has been done on male problem drinking and often the term alcoholic seems almost gender-specific! However researchers using powerful brain-imaging equipment have now found that women are far more vulnerable to alcohol-induced brain damage than men.
CT pictures of the brains of more than 150 volunteers revealed how women come to more harm and quicker than men when they drink heavily. In fact scientists have suspected for some time that men might be more resilient to booze than women. This German research gives visible evidence of this.
A team at the University of Heidelberg published their findings in Alcoholism.
In the study, around half of the volunteers were alcoholics. All of the volunteers had brain scans at the start and end of the six week study. Those who were alcoholic were helped to "dry out" during the six weeks. When the researchers analyzed the brain scan results they found obvious evidence of brain damage among the heavy drinkers.
Over all the drinkers had smaller brains, due to loss or atrophy, than the control group of non-drinkers. Women who were heavy drinkers lost the same amount of brain volume as the drinking men, but over a much shorter period of alcohol dependence.
Lead author Professor Karl Mann said although men generally drink more alcohol, women are more likely to develop alcohol dependence and suffer adverse consequences more readily. What's more other alcohol-related disorders, such as heart problems, depression and liver disease, also occurred earlier in women than men, he said.
"Women typically start drinking later in life, consume less...and one could reason that women are less affected by alcohol. But there is evidence for a faster progress of the events leading to dependence among female alcoholics and an earlier onset of adverse consequences of alcoholism. This suggests that women may be more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption."
For these reasons, he said it was even more important to spot and treat alcohol abuse early in women.
Read more in Alcoholism
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Vulnerabilities Keep Women in Abusive Relationships
May 1, 2005
We have long maintained that women who have suffered from abuse in childhood are more likely than others to form abusive relationships in adulthood. Now researchers have come up with ways to help victims understand the roots of their vulnerability and thus become less prone to form relationships with abusers.
Their main tool is the Vulnerability Conceptual Model which provides a tangible representation of a woman's experience in her abusive relationship(s). Using self-reflection, i.e. narrative therapy, women may discover the origins of, their susceptibility to, and untapped resiliencies against violent relationships.
An article published in the latest issue of Family Relations discusses this model and the vulnerabilities that emerged from interviews with seven black and twenty-one white women who suffered chronic abuse by male dating partners. "Rather than victim-blaming, studying women's vulnerabilities provides a theoretical basis for understanding why women stay in... and perhaps re-enter abusive relationships with the same partner or different partners," the authors state.
Focusing on relational vulnerability (one's beliefs about self and what is normal in an intimate relationship) and situational vulnerability (degree to which the woman is experiencing different types of stress when she began the relationship), the authors found common experiences and cultural differences among the women. Five sub-categories of relational vulnerability emerged: 1) external orientation or the degree to which the women see themselves as having value independent of others; 2) socialization to violence; 3) socialization to the abuse of power; 4) a caretaker identity that led to problematic, needy partners, and 5) cultural factors.
The first four categories were found in both black and white women. This is hardly surprising, we believe, since they all stem from childhood experience. Culturally, black women were affected by a strong race consciousness that compelled them to stay with black men citing a desire to maintain their relationship in the face of the negativity and dysfunctional reputation of black relationships. "Attempting to understand how women become victims of chronic abuse is an attempt to learn more about what fosters resilience," the authors conclude.
Read more in Family Relations
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Contraceptive Pill Linked to Depression
April 1, 2005
In our practice we have noticed that many female clients who began taking the pill, or HRT, became more depressed than they had been before they started. Other therapists have also noticed this effect.
Now research indicates the truth behind this observation. The Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre studied 60 women, and found that those taking the pill containing both oestrogen and progesterone were almost twice as likely to be depressed as those who did not.
Center director Professor Jayashri Kulkarni is urging clinicians to be aware of the psychiatric side effects of the pill. But she says more research is needed to understand how hormones effect moods. "When you have an outside agent it is going to have two possibilities," she said. "One is have a direct impact in the brain itself and may in fact trigger those chemicals that might be depressiogenic.
"Or it could actually impact on the natural hormone production and have a pathway that then triggers off depression that way."
Read more in ABC News Online
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Isolation Tied to Heart Disease Death in Women
January 11, 2005
Women with suspected coronary artery disease and smaller social networks die at twice the rate of those who have a larger circle of social contacts, according to a new study by Thomas Rutledge, PhD, of VA San Diego Healthcare System and colleagues.
The researchers found that women who had more social contacts and saw them more often also had lower blood glucose and blood pressure levels, lower rates of smoking and other factors that reduced their risk for coronary disease. Women with larger social networks also showed fewer signs of artery blockage during the four-year study.
"The overall magnitude of the social network effect rivaled or exceeded that of more commonly considered biomedical risk factors including smoking, diabetes and hypertension histories," says Rutledge.
However, social isolation's effect on heart health might have more to do with differences in income than anything else, the researchers concluded. In their study of 503 older women, Rutledge and colleagues found that annual income was statistically more important than social network size for predicting coronary disease death rates. Women with small social networks were also much more likely to make less than $20,000 a year, they discovered.
Although the findings point to a link between social isolation and low incomes, "it would be unwarranted from these results to suggest that the solution to social isolation consists of financial handouts" Rutledge adds.
In fact, they say, coronary disease and its disabling effects could be keeping women from making money and friends. For this reason, interventions that improve quality of life or symptom severity may enable women to pursue vocational or social relationships to a greater degree they say.
In a 2003 study of women age 65 and older, Rutledge and his team found that women with larger social networks were less likely to die at a certain age than those with smaller social networks.
Read more at Health Behavior News Service
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What Women Really Want
June 26, 2004
Psychologists have long held that heroism is a nonadaptive in Darwinian terms, so why does it exist at all? Risk-taking and heroic behavior are predominantly male tendencies, (literature and legend reflect this) so why do men go out and put them selves at risk.
Well, according to a study led by Professor Robin Dunbar of Liverpool university and published in a recent issue of the journal Review of General Psychology, heroism persists in many human cultures because of a female preference for risk-prone rather than risk-averse males as sexual partners. OK ladies: boxing matches, playing chicken, Iraq, September 11, WWII, the Roman Empire and even the Peloponnesian War are all your fault!!
The researchers suggests that such a preference may be exploited as a male mating strategy. They looked at what were the relative influences of altruism and bravery in the development of heroism and came to the conclusion that in the end females do prefer risk-prone brave males to risk-averse non-brave males, and that men are aware of this preference. Bravery in a man was shown to be the stronger factor influencing female choice of short-term partners (people to have sex with).
Altruism, they say, is important in long-term relationships and friendships, but for short-term liaisons, non-altruists were preferred.
Heroism may therefore have evolved because women instinctively seek out brave, risk-prone males because risk-taking acts as an honest cue for "good genes." Altruism was found to be a less influential factor in the evolution of heroism than bravery and a demonstrated willingness to take risks.
Read more in the Review of General Psychology
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Women Slate Rivals to Win a Mate
February 18, 2004
It appears all really is fair in love and war for women--scientists say they are programmed to be critical of rivals when they are looking for a man. Researchers at York University in Toronto, Canada, say women are prone to be at their cattiest when they are at their most fertile. They are more likely to criticize other women's appearance during the days around ovulation. The aim is to attack rivals to boost their own chances of finding a mate.
This extra-critical period may last for up to 10 days a month. Dr Maryanne Fisher, who led the research said: "When women are at their most fertile, they'll pay more attention to each other's appearance. They are more likely to criticize, and to do it in a more pronounced way. There can be more catty behavior, there will be more gossiping, nit-picking and spreading of nasty stories.
The researchers asked around 100 male and female college students to look at photographs of 35 women and 30 men and assess how attractive they were. The women were also asked what stage of their menstrual cycle they were at.
It was found women rated men as equally attractive regardless of what stage they were at in their cycle. But women who were ovulating rated the female faces as less attractive than those looking at the photos who were not in the fertile stage of their cycle.
The researchers say this is probably only one way in which women compete with each other for the attentions of men. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, published by the Royal Society, they say: "Women may derogate other women's fidelity, promiscuity or maternal aptitude for example, in addition to, or as an alternative to derogating their attractiveness."
Claws at ten paces, ladies!
Read more in Biology Letters
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Women Most Effective Leaders for Today's World
October 31, 2003
I'm going to let Alicia and Sophie run the Uplift Program! The latest research shows that a mere man is clearly inadequate to the task!
Much has been written about the glass ceiling, the double standard and other barriers to women in management. A related question that has consumed both academic and popular writers is whether men and women have the same leadership abilities.
The answer suggested by a comprehensive meta-analysis published in the Psychological Bulletin might surprise you. On average, women in management positions are somewhat better leaders than men in equivalent positions, according to the study. This project, "Transformational, Transactional and Laissez Faire Leadership Styles: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men," statistically combines the results of 45 published and unpublished studies on leaders in business, academics and other areas to examine whether the typical leadership styles of men and women differ.
"The meta-analysis revealed relatively small sex differences, which is to be expected since the men and women compared are in equivalent roles with relatively similar responsibilities," said Alice Eagly, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at Northwestern University. "Thus, the differences in male and female managerial behavior are in the discretionary aspects of behavior, because all managers have to carry out basic tasks required by their roles," she said. "Still, the implications of our findings are encouraging for female leadership when you consider that all aspects of leadership style on which women exceed men relate positively to effectiveness."
The meta-analysis showed that women are more likely than men to use leadership styles that other studies have shown produce better worker performance and effectiveness in today's world. Specifically, women were more likely to be transformational leaders, defined as those who serve as role models, mentor and empower workers and encourage innovation even when the organization they lead is generally successful.
Eagly's meta-analysis grows out of a substantial body of research that attempts to identify leadership styles that are especially attuned to contemporary conditions. Gaining momentum in the 1990s, that research showed that transformational leadership strengthens organizations by inspiring followers' commitment and creativity.
Leadership researchers found that, in contrast, "transactional" leaders appeal to subordinates' self-interest by forming exchange relationships, based on using reward and punishment as incentives. The researchers also distinguished a laissez faire style that is marked by an overall failure to take responsibility for managing. In Eagly's study, women also scored higher than men on one measure of transactional leadership -- rewarding employees for good performance. "That is the only aspect of transactional leadership that is associated with positive outcomes," Eagly noted.
Men scored higher than women on the other transactional aspects, such as using punishment, and on laissez faire leadership -- behaviors that do not appear to produce more effective organizations.
"Giving women equal access to leadership roles obviously would increase the size of an organization's pool of potential managers," Eagly said. "What people may not realize is that adding women to that pool likely increases the proportion of candidates with superior leadership skills."
The glass ceiling itself may produce more highly skilled female leaders. Research shows that higher standards are often imposed on women to attain leadership roles and to retain them. Because transformational leadership constitutes skillful leadership, women may be more skillful leaders than men because they have to meet a higher standard.
Read
more in the Psychological Bulletin
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Women Wired for Worry
April 23, 2003
The biochemistry of women's brains makes them more vulnerable to stress and anxiety, researchers have found. They have shown that women have lower levels of a brain chemical that controls anxiety.
Having less of the chemical, an enzyme called COMT, appears to make a person more anxious and highly strung. And women who have a particular version of the gene that makes thenzyme are most likely to worry most of all.
Scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) combined DNA analysis, recordings of brain activity and psychological tests. They found that women with one particular variation of the gene--called Val 158Met--scored high in tests that measured their anxiety levels. Scans of electrical activity in the brain also showed signs that they had an anxious temperament.
Everybody inherits two copies of the gene--one from each parent. Women who inherited two copies of the Val 158Met gene were the greatest worriers of all. However, men who had the same genetic make-up did not appear to be extra anxious.
Researcher Dr Mary-Anne Enoch said the variant gene was linked to a threefold to fourfold decrease in COMT enzyme levels. "Our study suggests that women with this genotype may be more vulnerable to anxiety because their COMT levels fall below a minimum threshold."
The study also highlighted the fact that all women--not just those with the gene variant--were bigger worriers than men. Previous studies have shown that women generally have lower COMT levels. A recent study at the same laboratory found that the variant gene was also associated with a higher level of brain response to pain and stress.
COMT levels have also been shown to influence mental awareness, alcoholism and schizophrenia.
The findings were published in the journal Psychiatric Genetics.
Read more in Psychiatric Genetics
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Myth of Female Impotence "Created"
April 2, 2003
The pharmaceutical industry has "created" a disease out of
female sexual problems, it has been suggested. An article in the British
Medical Journal suggests drug manufacturers are defining the condition
in order to have a new market for products.
Since the launch of Viagra to treat male impotence in 1998, its manufacturers
Pfizer has reported sales of $1.5bn. Drug companies are now looking to recreate
that kind of market with female sexual dysfunction, says the BMJ.
It says females sexual problems are being wrongly "medicalized",
and the numbers affected exaggerated. It also suggests some researchers are
too closely linked to drug companies who sponsor conferences and research.
In the article, researcher Ray Moynihan said: "A cohort of researchers
with close ties to drug companies are working with colleagues in the pharmaceutical
industry to develop and define a new category of human illness at meetings
heavily sponsored by companies racing to develop new drugs."
Some doctors
say coining the phrase "female sexual dysfunction" makes
an illness out of normal changes in women's sexual feelings which may happen
after childbirth or being with the same partner for many years. Dr Sandra
Leiblum, professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School said: "I
think there is dissatisfaction and perhaps disinterest among a lot of women,
but that doesn't mean they have a disease."
And Dr John Bancroft, director
of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University said: "The danger of
portraying sexual difficulties as a dysfunction is that they are likely
to encourage doctors to prescribe drugs to change sexual
function when the attention should be paid to other aspects of a woman's
life.
"It's also likely to make women think they have a malfunction when they
do not."
Read more in the British Medical Journal
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Occupation Directly Impacts a Woman's Retirement
April 2, 2003
Women doctors, teachers and other professionals may have a tougher time adjusting
to retirement than do women who hold jobs customarily considered nonprofessional,
such as clerical positions and cafeteria help, reports a new study from Ohio
State University.
There were some fundamental differences between how women in the professional
group and those in the nonprofessional group perceived retirement, said
Christine Price, author of the study. For instance, women who worked
in professional occupations reported feeling a sense of loss once they left their jobs,
while women who held nonprofessional jobs felt relieved to retire.
Also, women in the professional group tended to base their decision to retire on pension
eligibility and health concerns, while women in the other group
based their retirement decision on family issues, such as being able to
spend more time with grandchildren.
More and more women are seeing employment as a lifetime commitment. It's
likely that women do and will continue to identify more closely with their
work roles, and the results from this study may show what future generations
of women will face when they retire. "Women in the nonprofessional group explored
new interests with no feelings of loss," Price said. "In comparison,
women in the professional group enjoyed the retirement experience overall,
yet still felt a sense of loss."
The research appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Women and Aging.
"More and more women are seeing employment as a lifetime commitment," she
said. "It's likely that women do and will continue to identify
more closely with their work roles, and the results from this study
may show what future generations of women will face when they retire."
Interview results
showed marked differences between the groups in attitudes toward certain
aspects of retirement: Attachment to work roles and professional
identity. The decision to retire meant the end of a significant chapter
in the lives of the women in the professional group. They talked about
losing their professional identities and, subsequently, feeling a reduction
in their social status (like men retirees).
In contrast, most of the women in
the nonprofessional group said they were relieved to leave their jobs.
Those who became active volunteers reported feeling an
increased sense of importance and responsibility after retiring.
Social Contacts
Some women in the professional group missed the daily social interaction
that work provided. Even women who did keep in touch with former coworkers
said that they still felt a loss in relationships, Price said. Women in the
nonprofessional group didn't share this same sense of loss, either
because they hadn't developed close friendships with their coworkers, or
they had continued these friendships into retirement.
Family Roles and Obligations
Family relationships were important to women from each group. However,
the time spent in family roles and the influence of family on the retirement
decision differed considerably between the two groups. While the decision to retire
was mainly influenced by family issues--such as helping to care for grandchildren--for
women in the nonprofessional group, women in the professional group were
less likely to focus on family responsibilities and more likely to have based
their retirement decisions on pension eligibility and health concerns.
Community Involvement
Women in both groups kept busy with volunteer and recreational activities.
However, women in the professional group tended to be involved in more
community-related activities that drew upon their professional expertise
than the women in the nonprofessional group. For example, the retired teachers
and academic administrators served as substitute teachers and as mentors to
school-age children. These women also served on boards and donated time to
nonprofit agencies. The women in the nonprofessional group didn't place as
much emphasis on community involvement, Price said. When they did volunteer,
they were interested in activities that
expanded their interests, rather than pursuing activities related to =heir
former occupations. In comparison to the professional group, the nonprofessional
women spent more time doing recreational activities, such as quilting, painting and
using computers.
Reported in the Journal of Women and Aging
Read more on the Ohio State University website
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Men and Women See Failure Differently
February 10, 2003
Edward Hirt, a social psychologist at Indiana University Bloomington has spent the last 10 years conducting research on this aspect of social psychology that involves the term self-handicapping.
"Self-handicapping is defined as an individual's attempt to reduce a threat to esteem by actively seeking or creating factors that interfere with performance as a causal explanation for failure," Hirt explained. "The goals of self-handicapping are to disregard ability as the causal factor for a poor performance and to embrace ability as the causal factor for a success."
His current study of several hundred subjects concentrated on gender differences in how self-handicapping is perceived. "What we found is that women have less tolerance for self-handicapping by men or women. They routinely made more negative evaluations of the self-handicapping targets and were less willing than men to excuse self-handicapping even when alternative explanations for effort withdrawal, such as peer pressure, were viable. We found that women not only are more suspicious of people who blow things off or withdraw effort, but also are more likely to think the person is just generally lazy, unmotivated or lacking in self-control," he said.
Hirt believes these findings reflect a fundamental difference between men and women in what they value in performance settings. "Men were far more lenient in their attributions of self-handicapping targets than were women and less likely to ascribe negative motivations to individuals who engage in self-handicapping behavior. Women, however, have little respect for individuals who lack motivation and fail to put forth the effort in important performance settings," he said. He noted an interesting paradox: those most inclined to engage in
self-handicapping behavior are less likely to attribute that motive to others.
Hirt said researchers want to develop a better understanding of the sources of such gender differences in value orientation. "It may be that the sex differences we have observed are simply another manifestation of broad gender differences in personality," he said.
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Unrealistic Goals Can Be Unhealthy
December 2, 2002
The study also found that girls who reported symptoms of depression and had bulimic tendencies such as binge eating and occasional purging were more likely to develop full-blown bulimia.
Researchers interviewed 157 predominantly white, middle-to-upper class girls attending private school in New York City. The girls were interviewed when they were between the ages of 12 and 16 and interviewed twice more, when they were 14 to 18 and when they were 20 to 24 years old. Girls who were perfectionists and had symptoms of anorexia nervosa in their younger years were more likely to develop full-blown anorexia nervosa by the time they reached their early 20s, the study found.
These girls felt they were failures if they weren't able to meet unattainable goals they set for themselves, the study authors say. That includes goals in general, not just body image goals. It may be that the girls feel their bodies are one thing they have more control over and they can meet their body goals, even if these are extremely unhealthy, suggests researcher Julia Graber, a University of Florida psychology professor.
About 20 per cent of adolescent girls and young women have signs of eating disorders. There can be serious consequences if they develop into full-blown eating disorders. For example, anorexia can lead to the deterioration of heart muscles and development of severe heart problems. The constant vomiting associated with bulimia can cause damage to the gastrointestinal tract.
It's estimated that as many 3.7 per cent of women suffer from anorexia nervosa and as many as 4.2 per cent have bulimia in their lifetimes, says the US National Institute of Mental Health.
Read more in the International Journal of Eating Disorders
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Unmarried Mothers More Depressed
December 2, 2002
Researchers in the United States have also found that the absence of their natural father during childhood may leave some women prone to depression. The findings are based on a nationwide study of almost 1,000 women between 1979 and 1992.
Dr Ariel Kalil of the University of Chicago and Dr James Kunz of the University of Maryland looked at information collected as part of the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
Women who took part in the survey answered questions that measured depressive symptoms, such as feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, loneliness, loss of appetite, restless sleep and concentration problems. The survey indicated that women who gave birth outside marriage were most likely to become depressed in their late 20s. This applied to women who gave birth both before and after their 18th birthday.
The survey also suggested those whose natural fathers weren't living in the home, or who lived with their stepfather before the age of 14, were also more likely to become depressed. A high rate of depression was also found among women who had low self-esteem or who had poor verbal and math skills as teenagers.
The researchers suggested that the link between having a child outside marriage and depression could change in the years ahead, not least because fewer people are getting married. They said: "Perhaps as non-marital childbearing becomes more "normative" over time, the relationship between it and later-life depressive symptomatology will change in nature and strength." But they added: "We see this as a pressing issue for future research."
An estimated one in five people suffer depression at some point in their lives.
There is so much research coming out now to show that two-parent "traditional" families are far superior to one-parent families. Our research tends to support the old african proverb "It takes a village to raise a child." In our clinical experience we find that depression is very often the result of family break-up or parental absence. BM
Read more in Child Development
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Poverty Triggers Early Menopause
October 22, 2002
Researchers in the United States have found that women who suffer economic hardship are 80% more likely to have early symptoms than those who have had no money worries. They believe the stress associated with poverty may affect women's egg levels and cause them to lose fertility at a younger age.
Lauren Wise and colleagues at Boston University School of Public Health analysed the cases of over 600 women between the ages of 36 and 45. The women, none of whom were menopausal at the beginning of the study, were monitored for three years. The researchers also asked the women about their financial histories.
Women who had suffered economic hardship in their early or later years were most likely to have early onset of the perimenopause. This is the period leading up to the menopause, when the hormonal, biological and clinical changes begin. Early signs include changes in the duration of or time between periods and changes in blood flow.
Those women who had lived through poverty experienced the perimenopause more than a year earlier than those who had never had money worries. On average, they reported symptoms at the age of 44. Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the researchers said: "The study found that women reporting both childhood and adult economic distress had increased rates of entry into perimenopause compared with women reporting no economic distress across the lifecourse."
The link was still evident even after the researchers took other factors such as smoking, bodyweight and depression into account. They said more research was needed to identify why these women became menopausal early. However, they suggested that it was probably a combination of factors including stress and exposure to tobacco smoke and other toxins.
Read more in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Read more in the British Medical Journal
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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