Beatty Cohan
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

THE BOTTOM LINE AND WOMEN IN BUSINESS…Facts About Mental Health, Divorce and Domestic Violence

  • Did you know that 350 million people of all ages and stages in life and from every socioeconomic background worldwide suffer from depression?
  • At worst, depression puts people at a higher risk of dying by suicide. This is extremely consequential for ‘midlife adults’ according to Dr. Michelle Riba, professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Depression Center.
  • It’s not uncommon for a person’s first depressive episode to appear after age 60.
  • 41%-50% of first marriages end in divorce
  • 60% of second marriages fail
  • 73% of third marriages end in divorce
  • Every 9 seconds a woman in the United States is the victim of domestic violence
  • Every year 2 million injuires and 1,300 deaths are caused as a result of domestic violence
  • 3 women are murdered every day by an intimate partner
  • African American women were murdered by males at a rate of 2.61 per 100,000 in victim single offender incidents. For white women, the rate was 0.99 per 100,000.

Despite these startling statistics, many women’s business networking organizations meeting that I have attended over the years rarely, if ever, make the connection between business success and mental health and are therefore, reluctant and unwilling to entertain discussions about mental health and relationships and how these invariably affect the bottom line.

No one is immune from mental health/relationship distress at some point in their life. Major American female business leaders including Arianna Huffington have courageously talked about the importance of sleep after she collapsed one day and realized that despite her great business success, that her life was out of sync. Sheryl Sandberg also has openly spoken out multiple times and written about the importance of work/life balance.

Why is it so difficult for so many women’s organizations to acknowledge the importance of dealing with mental health issues? Why do most women’s networking groups focus almost exclusively on branding and social media connections without paying even lip service to how our bottom lines will indeed be affected if each of us is not in a good place emotionally, psychologically, psychiatrically and physically?

All of us…not just Michelle Obama and a few celebrities must put aside our fears, vulnerabilities, insecurities and embarrassments and commit to putting mental health on both our business and personal agendas.

Beatty Cohan, MSW, LCSW, AASECT is a nationally recognized psychotherapist, sex therapist, author of For Better for Worse Forever: Discover the Path to Lasting Love, speaker, columnist for the Huffington Post, ThriveGlobal, DivorceForce, Three Tomatoes, Fox Health, national radio and television expert guest and host of ASK BEATTY on the Progressive Radio Network. She has a private practice in New York City and East Hampton.

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