Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Education for Health
Convener: Eliane Didier, France

Exploration of Mental Health among Single Woman: Poster Presentation
Wen-Ting Chen, International Member, Taiwan; with Shih-Ming Kuo and Ya-Lie Ku

During August 2004, a pilot study to explore the mental health of single women was conducted in Kaohsiung, a site that reflected national statistics from the Ministry of the Interior showing that the number of divorced women in Taiwan had doubled between 1993 and 2003. A literature review of 90 articles concerning single parent families found that the 25 articles (28%) focusing on the sociological problems of single women reported single women as frequently facing stress over finance and parent-child relationships. No further studies were found to discuss the mental health issues single women face. The conclusions of our pilot study of 21 participants were that the subjects had experienced unsafe sexual behaviors at a young age, violent relationships in former marriages, suicidal thoughts or actual suicide attempts. It found that they used support groups to cope with mental stress. As follow-up to this study there should be further surveys of single women’s health in order to identify their major mental problems. Health care professionals will then be able to design health education programs to help single women cope with the stresses in their lives and bring about gradual improvement in the mental health of this group.

Wen-Ting Chen , an Instructor in Psychiatric Nursing at Fooyin University, Taiwan, will make the presentation. Her associates in the study, Shih-Ming Kuo and Ya-Lie Ku are respectively an Instructor in Science Education at Fooyin University and an Instructor in Community Health Nursing,at Fooyin University, and a Board Member of Kaohsiung Women Awakening Association, which provided the subjects for the project .