New insights into women’s mental health
The research school with 16 doctoral students has been a great success according to Coordinator Shima Momeni, Deputy Director Ingela Nyström and Emma Hovén Director at WOMHER. Photo: Tobias Sterner/Bildbyrån
In 2020, the Women’s Mental Health during the Reproductive Lifespan centre (WOMHER) was established to raise awareness about women’s mental health. An interdisciplinary research school was started at the time, and now the work of the 16 doctoral students on their individual research projects is showing some excellent results. WOMHER’s way of pursuing research has also served as a model for a similar centre, this time at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Women are over-represented in rates of sick leave and anxiety disorders. But why is this so? And what can be done about it? These were the reasons that Uppsala University’s interdisciplinary centre for women’s mental health, WOMHER, was established in 2020.
A research school that inspired others
16 doctoral students from all over the world pursuing an equal number of projects were recruited to the initiative. As an example, one of these projects is investigating whether some birth control pills could be associated with depression. In another, the doctoral student is using an app to see if it can help predict who is likely to suffer from post-partum depression.
The projects are very different in nature, but they all aim to help us understand how we can promote and strengthen women’s mental health.
“Can we find better ways to prevent post-partum depression? Can we find better ways to treat and understand manifestations of depression in various contexts? Or could we gain a better understanding of how we can make life easier for women suffering from cancer while also taking care of young children? Since 2020, these projects have produced many very useful findings that can help us understand, prevent and treat a range of manifestations of mental illness that we see in women,” says Emma Hovén, Director of WOMHER and docent in medical psychology.
The doctoral student projects have expanded the networks of researchers at Uppsala University. These are researchers who might not otherwise have come into contact with each other,” says Emma Hovén (left). Photo: Tobias Sterner/Bildbyrån
The doctoral students come from a range of disciplines. And to make the centre even more interdisciplinary, there was a requirement that the principal supervisors and assistant supervisors for each project should come from at least two different disciplinary domains. One of the goals of the research school has been to learn from each other and gain new perspectives on how research in this field can be conducted. New perspectives have also been gained thanks to the doctoral students having been recruited from different parts of the world.
“We have people who have moved here from China, Türkiye and Ethiopia thanks to these projects, which has created a very unique and dynamic group,” says project coordinator Shima Momeni.
She also says that this research school has proved so successful that another university has followed suit.
“WOMHER’s way of building up research has been the inspiration for a similar centre to be established in Tübingen in Germany. They’ve been granted funding for two cohorts of doctoral students by the German Research Foundation,” she says,
Back home in Uppsala, two of the doctoral students have already defended their theses, and the majority are expected to be ready to defend their theses next year. Then WOMHER will compile all the results and communicate them in a research synthesis.
What will happen then? Are you recruiting new doctoral students?
“Our ambition is to be able to bring in a new cohort of doctoral students, because we’ve seen so much benefit from having multiple doctoral students starting at the same time. The current cohort have been able to learn from and be inspired by each other. But unfortunately we don’t have the budget for this as things stand today, although we are working actively to ensure that we can have doctoral students in the future as well,” says Emma Hovén.
Talking more about mental health
Although its doctoral students are finishing up, the centre itself is still very much alive. At the moment, for example, work has begun to compile the current research on mental ill-health among women today. This is being done in collaboration with the research initiative Young People's Mental Health in Focus (UPIC) and the non-profit association Mind.
“We’re seeing that almost 75 per cent of young girls today report being troubled by worry and anxiety. What does this actually mean? We’re going to produce a knowledge summary that will provide nuance on the statistics that we’re seeing today. And it will also challenge the narrative about mental illness. We talk a lot about mental illness, but should we and could we be talking more about opportunities to strengthen mental health?” says Emma Hovén.
Another important contribution that WOMHER can make is to show students at Uppsala University that this research is being done and is important. Ingela Nyström, who is the Deputy Director of WOMHER, says that the centre has previously given lectures for female and non-binary engineering students through SIV (Uppsala’s female and non-binary engineers network), and has been invited to do the same again this autumn.
“Many female students at some point during their studies at the Faculty of Science and Technology (Teknat) suffer from mental ill-health. I think it means a lot that we can show that there is research being done in this area. And also highlighting that feeling bad during your studies is not a given,” says Ingela Nyström, Deputy Director of WOMHER and Professor of Visualisation.
Sandra Gunnarsson