Women’s (Mental) Health Care
Van Mens-Verhulst has been involved in feminist (mental) health care since 1981, both as a teacher and as a researcher. She was primarily interested in the development of a theory and ethics to support mental health care for women, and to understand the intergenerational relationships between women. To this cause, she started an international research project resulting in the book Daughtering and Mothering (Routledge 1993). With Karen Henwood of Bangor University, she organized the symposium "Researching Gendered Subjectivities", which took place in Dublin in 1997. Since 2008 the project was continued with the Round Table Daughtering and Mothering Revisited, since 2008, in cooperation with professor Liesbeth Woertman (Utrecht University) and professor Lorraine Radtke (Calgary University). One of the outcomes is Mens-Verhulst, J. van , Woertman, E.M. & Radtke, L. (2014) Faculty women as models for women students: how context matters. Studies in Higher Education 40 (7) DOI:10.1080/03075079.2013.865163.
Van Mens-Verhulst was the initiating force behind the international symposium "Dilemmas of Feminist Mental Health Care ", taking place in 1997. She wrote the chapter "Beyond Innocence: Feminist Mental Health Care from the Postmodern Perspective," for the book edited by Henwood, Griffin & Phoenix (London: Sage, 1998).
The 1996 Simulation and Gaming Yearbook contains a report of van her efforts to model feminist (mental) health care in a simulation game. In 2008 she has edited The history of Dutch feminist health care, together with professor dr. B. Waaldijk from Utrecht University. (See also the video production).