According to Mental Health Foundation in UK, my research on the data during my thesis project I’ve learnt; some facts about women mental health.
The facts and figures around Mental Health in the UK are alarming.
1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year
Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain
Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men
About 10% of children have a mental health problem at any one time
Depression affects 1 in 5 older people
Suicides rates show that British men are three times as likely to die by suicide than British women
Self-harm statistics for the UK show one of the highest rates in Europe: 400 per 100,000 population
Only 1 in 10 prisoners has no mental disorder
Some facts for women in mental distress, their friends, relatives, partners and those who care for them. It will be also be of interest to students and health professionals working with women in mental distress.
Some facts about women’s mental health
Recorded rates of anxiety and depression are one and a half to two times higher in women than in men.
One study showed that 57 per cent of those attending emergency departments for self-harm were women.
Thirteen to fifteen per cent of new mothers experience postnatal depression.
Women in custody have a high level of psychological disturbance – 78 per cent, compared with 15 per cent in women in the general adult female population.
Nearly two-thirds of womein their lifetime. Depression affects nearly half of women exposed to IPV, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects almost two-thirds.
Ninety per cent of the 1.6 million people in the UK who have an eating disorder are female.
What difference does gender make in mental health?
‘Gender’ refers to culturally and socially determined differences between men and women. It is related to how we are perceived and expected to think and act as women and men because of the way society is organised, not because of our sex (‘which refers to biologically determined characteristics).
Gender influences how much control men and women have over key aspects of their lives that can affect mental health, such as economic position and social status. Research that takes gender into account is considered to lead to better treatments and outcomes.
Gender awareness in mental health is required in law. The Equality Act 2010 reinforces the legal status of the Gender Equality Duty, which requires all public bodies to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment on the grounds of gender, and to promote equality of opportunity between women and men. All mental health and social care organisations have a duty to prepare gender equality policies for staff and services, to consult their stakeholders and to monitor the impact of their policies annually.
Gender inequality and risks to women’s mental health
Gender inequality in society leads to differences in the life experiences of men and women, which affect mental health in different ways. Gender inequality is described as a system that tends to give more advantages to men in terms of employment, status and ownership. Women are much more often expected to look after others in the home or in society, often doing work that is undervalued and unpaid or poorly paid.
Some risk factors for mental health problems affect women more often than men. These include gender-based violence, social and economic disadvantage, low income and income inequality, low or subordinate social status and rank, and major responsibility for the care of others.
Gender stereotyping and bias
Both women and men can be adversely affected by gender-based assumptions, stereotypes and social pressures. For example, beliefs that women are emotionally or psychologically vulnerable, while men are strong, can be unhelpful for people’s mental health.
A World Health Organization (WHO) report claims that researchers have over-emphasised the impact on women’s mental health of biological factors such as menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth. The report says that the impact on women’s mental health often has more to do with what is happening in their social and emotional lives than with biological changes.
Gender differences in mental health disorders
Women receive more services than men for mental health problems at the level of primary care, though this difference is less at the level of secondary care (specialist and hospital treatment). It is difficult to know whether more mental health problems are diagnosed in women at primary care level because they seek help more often than men, or because they actually experience more distress.
According to another WHO report, there is little difference in the prevalence of mental health disorders between men and women, but the types of disorders and the stages of life at which mental health problems are most likely to be diagnosed differ. In childhood, boys are more often identified as having mental disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and substance abuse is more common. Young women experience more depression, self-harm and eating disorders. In adulthood, women are far more likely to be diagnosed with depression. Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are similarly likely in both sexes. In old age, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and psychoses.
Women are more likely than men to have more than one disorder, which increases disability.
Just a bit of knowledge on Christmas. The word “Christmas” originated as a compound meaning “Christ’s mass”. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, which is from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is from Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation ofHebrew Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ), “Messiah”; and mæsse is from Latin missa, the celebration of the Eucharist. The form “Christenmas” was also historically used, but is now considered archaic and dialectal it derives from Middle English Cristenmasse, literally “Christian mass”.”Xmas” is an abbreviation of Christmas found particularly in print, based on the initial letter chi (Χ) in Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), “Christ”, though numerous style guides discourage its use; it has precedent in Middle English Χρ̄es masse (where “Χρ̄” is an abbreviation for Χριστός). In addition to “Christmas”, the holiday has been known by various other names throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons referred to the feast as midwinter, “midwinter”, or, more rarely, as Nātiuiteð (from Latin nātīvitās below). “Nativity”, meaning “birth”, is from Latinnātīvitās. In Old English, Gēola (“Yule”) referred to the period corresponding to January and December; the cognate Old Norse Jól was later the name of a pagan Scandinavian holiday which merged with Christmas around 1000. “Noel” (or “Nowell”) entered English in the late 14th century and is from the Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nātālis (diēs), “(day) of birth”.
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day (Old English: Crīstesmæsse, literally “Christ’smass”) is an annual commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, celebrated generally on December 25 as a religious and cultural holiday by billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it closes theAdvent season and initiates the twelve days of Christmastide. Christmas is a civil holiday in many of the world’s nations, is celebrated by an increasing number of non-Christians, and is an integral part of the Christmas and holiday season.
The precise day of Jesus’ birth, which historians place between 7 and 2 BC, is unknown. In the early-to-mid 4th century, the Western Christian Church first placed Christmas on December 25, a date later adopted also in the East.Theories advanced to explain that choice include that it falls exactly nine months after the Christian celebration of the conception of Jesus, or that it was selected to coincide with either the date of the Roman winter solstice or of some ancientpagan winter festival.
The original date of the celebration in Eastern Christianity was January 6, in connection with Epiphany, and that is still the date of the celebration for theArmenian Apostolic Church and in Armenia, where it is a public holiday. As of 2011, there is a difference of 13 days between the modern Gregorian calendar and the older Julian calendar. Those who continue to use the Julian calendar or its equivalents thus celebrate December 25 and January 6 on what for the majority of the world is January 7 and January 19. For this reason, Ethiopia, Russia andUkraine celebrate Christmas, both as a Christian feast and as a public holiday, on what in the Gregorian calendar is January 7.
The popular celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have a mix of pre-Christian, Christian and secular themes and origins. Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift giving, Christmas music and caroling, an exchange of Christmas cards, church celebrations, a special meal, and the display of various decorations, including Christmas trees, lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly. In addition, several closely related and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas and Kris Kringle among other names, are associated with bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season and have their own body of traditions and lore. Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. The economic impact of Christmas is a factor that has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world.
Date of celebration
For centuries, Christian writers accepted that Christmas was the actual date on which Jesus was born. John Chrysostom preached a sermon in Antioch c. 386 which established the date of Christmas as December 25 on the Julian calendar since the conception of Jesus (Luke 1:26) had been announced during the sixth month of Elisabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist (Luke 1:10-13) as dated from the duties Zacharias performed on the Day of Atonement during the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar Ethanim or Tishri (Lev. 16:29, 1 Kings 8:2) which falls in September–October.
In the early 18th century, scholars began proposing alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter solstice, which the Romans called bruma and celebrated on December 25. In 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a “paganization” that debased the true church. In 1889,Louis Duchesne proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated as nine months after theAnnunciation, the traditional date of the conception of Jesus, which itself was based on a traditional belief that he was conceived and crucified on the same date, 15 Nisan.
In the early 4th century, the church calendar contained Christmas on December 25 and other holidays placed on solar dates: “It is cosmic symbolism…which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the winter solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ, and the summer solstice as that of John the Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception. While they were aware that pagans called this day the ‘birthday’ of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas,” according to modern scholar S.E. Hijmans.
However, today, whether or not the birth date of Jesus is on December 25 is not considered to be an important issue among mainstreamChristian denominations; rather, celebrating the coming of God into the world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity is considered to be the primary meaning of Christmas.
Using the Julian calendar
Eastern Orthodox national churches, including those of Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem mark feasts using the older Julian calendar. December 25 on the Julian calendar currently corresponds to January 7 on the internationally-used Gregorian calendar. However, other Orthodox Christians, such as the churches of Greece, Romania, Antioch,Alexandria, Albania, Finland and the Orthodox Church in America, among others, began using the Revised Julian calendar in the early 20th century, which corresponds exactly to the Gregorian calendar.
These Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on the same day as Western Christianity. Oriental Orthodox churches also use their own calendars, which are generally similar to the Julian calendar. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the nativity in combination with theFeast of the Epiphany on January 6. Armenian churches customarily use the Gregorian calendar, but some use the Julian calendar and thus celebrate Christmas Day on January 19, and Christmas Eve on January 18 (according to the Gregorian calendar).
Commemorating Jesus’ birth
Anbetung der Hirten (Adoration of the Shepherds) (c. 1500–10), by Italian painter Giorgio da Castelfranco
Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary as a fulfillment of the Old Testament’s Messianic prophecy. The Bible contains two accounts which describe the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. Depending on one’s perspective, these accounts either differ from each other or tell two versions of the same story These biblical accountsare found in the Gospel of Matthew, namely Matthew 1:18, and the Gospel of Luke, specifically Luke 1:26 and 2:40. According to these accounts, Jesus was born to Mary, assisted by her husband Joseph, in the city of Bethlehem.
According to popular tradition, the birth took place in a stable, surrounded by farm animals, though neither the stable nor the animals are specifically mentioned in the Biblical accounts. However, a manger (that is, a feeding trough) is mentioned in Luke 2:7, where it states Mary “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (KJV); the New International Version now translates this, “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them” (NIV). Early iconographic representations of the nativity placed the animals and manger within a cave (located, according to tradition, under the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem), not a stable.
Shepherds from the fields surrounding Bethlehem were told of the birth by an angel, and were the first to see the child. Popular tradition also holds that three kings or wise men (named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar) visited the infant Jesus in the manger, though this does not strictly follow the Biblical account. The Gospel of Matthew instead describes a visit by an unspecified number of magi, or astrologers, sometime after Jesus was born while the family was living in a house (Matthew 2:11), who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the young child Jesus. The visitors were said to be following a mysterious star, commonly known as the Star of Bethlehem, believing it to announce the birth of a king of the Jews. The commemoration of this visit, the Feast of Epiphany celebrated on January 6, is the formal end of the Christmas season in some churches.
Christians celebrate Christmas in various ways. In addition to this day being one of the most important and popular for the attendance of church services, there are other devotions and popular traditions. In some Christian denominations, children re-enact the events of the Nativity with animals to portray the event with more realism or sing carols that reference the event. Some Christians also display a small re-creation of the Nativity, known as a Nativity scene or crèche, in their homes, using figurines to portray the key characters of the event. Prior to Christmas Day, the Eastern Orthodox Church practices the 40-day Nativity Fast in anticipation of the birth of Jesus, while much ofWestern Christianity celebrates four weeks of Advent. The final preparations for Christmas are made on Christmas Eve.
A long artistic tradition has grown of producing painted depictions of the nativity in art. Nativity scenes are traditionally set in a stable with livestock and include Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus in the manger, the three wise men, the shepherds and their sheep, the angels, and the Star of Bethlehem.
History
The earliest evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus is from the Chronography of 354 AD. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6. The December 25 celebration was imported into the East later: in Antioch by John Chrysostom towards the end of the 4th century, probably in 388, and in Alexandria only in the following century. Even in the West, the January 6 celebration of the nativity of Jesus seems to have continued until after 380.
Many popular customs associated with Christmas developed independently of the commemoration of Jesus’ birth, with certain elements having origins in pre-Christian festivals that were celebrated around the winter solstice by pagan populations who were later converted to Christianity. These elements, including the Yule log from Yule and gift giving from Saturnalia, became syncretized into Christmas over the centuries. The prevailing atmosphere of Christmas has also continually evolved since the holiday’s inception, ranging from a sometimes raucous, drunken, carnival-like state in the Middle Ages, to a tamer family-oriented and children-centered theme introduced in a 19th-century reformation. Additionally, the celebration of Christmas was banned on more than one occasion within Protestant Christendomdue to concerns that it was too pagan or unbiblical.
Controversy and criticism
Throughout the holiday’s history, Christmas has been the subject of both controversy and criticism from a wide variety of different sources. The first documented Christmas controversy was Christian-led, and began during the English Interregnum, when England was ruled by aPuritan Parliament. Puritans (including those who fled to America) sought to remove the remaining pagan elements of Christmas. During this brief period, the English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas entirely, considering it “a popish festival with no biblical justification”, and a time of wasteful and immoral behavior.
Controversy and criticism continues in the present-day, where some Christian and non-Christians have claimed that an affront to Christmas (dubbed a “war on Christmas” by some) is ongoing. In the United States there has been a tendency to replace the greeting Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have initiated court cases to bar the display of images and other material referring to Christmas from public property, including schools. Such groups argue that government-funded displays of Christmas imagery and traditions violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the establishment by Congress of a national religion. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lynch vs. Donnelly that a Christmas display (which included a Nativity scene) owned and displayed by the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island did not violate the First Amendment. In November 2009, the Federal appeals court in Philadelphia endorsed a school district’s ban on the singing of Christmas carols.
In the private sphere also, it has been alleged that any specific mention of the term “Christmas” or its religious aspects was being increasingly censored, avoided, or discouraged by a number of advertisers and retailers. In response, the American Family Association and other groups have organized boycotts of individual retailers. In the United Kingdom there have been some minor controversies, one of the most famous being the temporary promotion of the Christmas period as Winterval by Birmingham City Council in 1998. There were also protests in November 2009 when the city of Dundee promoted its celebrations as the Winter Night Light festival, initially with no specific Christmas references.
Jesus (Isa عيسى)
Jesus and Islamic view of Jesus
Jesus takes up the whole of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) in the Bible, as well as being the focus of the subsequent books of the New Testament.
He appears several times in the Qur’an: in
verses 35-59 of Sura 3: al-Imran (The Family of Imran),
verses 156-158 of Sura 4: an Nisa’ (The Women),
verses 109-120 of Sura 5: al-Ma’idah (The Repast),
verses 16-35 of Sura 19: Maryam (Mary),
verse 50 of Sura 23: al-Mu’minun (The Believers)
verses 57-65 of Sura 43: az-Zukhruf (The Gold Adornments) and in
verses 6 and 14 of Sura 61: as-Saff (The Battle Array).
Reference is made to him several more times.
The Qur’an contains few narratives from Jesus’ life, but does include many brief descriptions in common with the Bible:
Made the dead to live
Is the Messiah (the Christ)
Had disciples
His disciples were successful over disbelievers
Healed the blind and lepers
Filled with the Holy Spirit
Is alive in heaven now
In the Qur’an Jesus is said to have created a bird out of clay and blown life into it; and he is also said to have spoken as an infant in the cradle to defend his mother from the false accusations of fornication. These two narratives are not found in the Bible, but are in the Infancy Gospels (Non-Canonical Gospels).
The Qur’an rejects the Christian view of Jesus, specifically his divinity. According to the Qur’an, Jesus did not ask to be worshipped and Jesus asked people to worship God. Also, according to the Qur’an, God “has no partners” and believing that God took physical form is in of itself a sin.
Ho love of mine.. with a song and a whine.. You’re harsh and divine.. like truths and a lie.. but the tale end is not here.. I’ve nothing to fear.. for my love is yell of giving and hold on… in the bright emptiness.. in a room full of it.. is the cruel mistress ho ho o… I feel the sunrise.. that nest all hollowness.. for i have the way to go.. not come… And i feel so lonely yea.. There’s a better place from this emptiness..
I am dedicating this to the HUMANITY and the Great Soldiers and Civilian died defending Pakistan sovereignty as an Islamic State, infact it is one of my top favorites ghazal and indeed the poet. Sir Dr. Muhammad Iqbal
Sir Dr. Muhammad Iqbal (علامہ محمد اقبال /
Allama Muḥammad Iqbāl; November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938), commonly referred to as Allama Iqbāl (علامہ اقبال, ʿAllāma meaning “The Learned One”), was a Lahori Muslim poet, philosopher and politician in British India.
He wrote his works in Persian and Urdu. After studying in Cambridge, Munich and Heidelberg, Iqbal established a law practice, but concentrated primarily on writing scholarly works on politics, economics, history, philosophy and religion. He is best known for his poetic works, including Asrar-e-Khudi—for which he was knighted— Rumuz-e-Bekhudi, and the Bang-e-Dara, with its enduring patriotic song Tarana-e-Hind. In India, he is widely regarded for the patriotic song, Saare Jahan Se Achcha. In Afghanistan and Iran, where he is known as Eghbāl-e-Lāhoorī (اقبال لاہوری Iqbal of Lahore), he is highly regarded for his Persian works. Iqbal was a strong proponent of the political and spiritual revival of Islamic civilisation across the world, but specifically in South Asia; a series of famous lectures he delivered to this effect were published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.
One of the most prominent leaders of the All India Muslim League, Iqbal encouraged the creation of a “state in northwestern India for Muslims” in his 1930 presidential address. Iqbal encouraged and worked closely with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and he is known as Muffakir-e-Pakistan (“The Thinker of Pakistan”), Shair-e-Mashriq (“The Poet of the East”), and Hakeem-ul-Ummat (“The Sage of Ummah”).
He is officially recognized as the national poet of Pakistan. The anniversary of his birth (یوم ولادت محمد اقبال – Yōm-e Welādat-e Muḥammad Iqbāl) is on November 9, and is a national holiday in Pakistan.…
Creation is the product of synchronizing our energy with the universe. Once we experience the whole and recognize it, we become aware that we are nothing but the Divine Creative Force.
