Women’s Mental Health Across the Life Course in an Era of Polycrisis: Interacting exposures, inequities, resilience and solutions

Women and girls increasingly experience not one crisis at a time but overlapping shocks whose effects accumulate across the life course. Armed conflict, forced displacement, climate-related hazards and anxiety, economic insecurity, and repeated exposure to war and disaster through digital media interact with gender-based violence, unpaid care, reproductive transitions, disability, discrimination and constrained access to services. These exposures affect women differently across adolescence, the reproductive and perinatal years, midlife and menopause, and older adulthood, and the effects can be direct, vicarious, or digitally mediated. Yet the evidence remains fragmented across humanitarian health, climate psychology, reproductive psychiatry, public health and gerontology, particularly for women in conflict-affected, displaced, climate-vulnerable and resource-constrained settings. A focused Research Topic is needed to explain when these exposures amplify one another, for whom, and which responses protect mental health. This Research Topic aims to advance a life-course and intersectional account of women’s mental health in polycrisis, spanning adolescence, the reproductive and perinatal years, midlife and menopause, and older adulthood. It addresses the problem that existing research treats crises largely in isolation, leaving unclear when and for whom overlapping exposures amplify risk, and which responses protect mental health. Contributions are invited to address how conflict, displacement, climate threats, economic pressure and media exposure combine or cascade; which biological, psychological, relational, community and structural mechanisms explain differential risk and resilience; how poverty, race or ethnicity, migration status, disability, sexual orientation and rurality shape exposure and outcomes; and which prevention, clinical, service, community and policy responses are effective, scalable and culturally safe. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:- Cumulative and cascading exposure to conflict, displacement, climate threats, economic pressure and crisis-related media coverage - Life-course pathways: mental health across adolescence, the reproductive and perinatal years, midlife and menopause, and older adulthood - Biological, psychological, relational, community and structural mechanisms of risk and resilience - Intersectional inequities – poverty, race or ethnicity, migration status, disability, sexual orientation and rurality – and how they shape exposure, access and outcomes - Mental health outcomes across the spectrum, from distress and eco-anxiety to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance use, suicidality and severe mental illness - Prevention, clinical, service, community and policy responses that are effective, scalable and culturally safe - Intergenerational transmission of crisis-related mental health risk - Ethical, safety and lived-experience considerations in crisis-focused research with women Topic editors: Ayman Mohamed El-Ashry, Yasmine M. Osman, Rasha Kadri Ibrahim, Abdelaziz Hendy Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85981/womens-mental-health-across-the-life-course-in-an-era-of-polycrisis-interacting-exposures-inequities-resilience-and-solutions