MIND SPACE (READING FOR INSPIRATION)

Declining mental health of Indian Women.
--Bagampiriyal

The National Family Health survey of 2011-2021 showed that an overall 30% of woman India face gender-based violence putting almost one-third of Indian woman at a higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and depression.

Mental health problems can have a wide range of causes. There may be complicated combination of factors – childhood abuse or not having a happy childhood, loneliness, discrimination in their own family for being born as a girl child, prolonged stress, domestic violence or psychological abuse by intimate partner relationships.

When women are given more responsibilities such as work, home, caring for children and ageing parents along with psychological issues such as invalidation for whatever they do it triggers a depressive episode in women. When women shoulder all the responsibilities it restricts them to take shelter into safe spaces outside their homes. It also limits their mobility because they do have absolutely no time for themselves and conditions them into honed caregivers at the cost of their physical and mental well-being.

Women have a greater involvement in the lives of those around them, compared with the male members in the household. But the irony here is limited autonomy and hardships restricts the capacity of a woman to look after the needs of other members of her family and finally she is perceived as a “role failure”. The other family members who do not play any role express their discontent on the woman who shoulders the responsibility. Consequently, when stress-related depression affects women’s ability to carry out daily chores and impaired relationships with family members and their partners, finally women are blamed for these relational failures.

Relationships are key factors in women’s development and therefore the nature of these relationships affects their mental health. Women’s sense of self is so inextricably linked to their relationships and therefore any form of violence or abuse becomes a major stress in the lives of Indian Woman. Healthy family relationship and social support can mitigate women’s vulnerability to depression.

There are interventions like counselling and stress management guidance available to women but will this solve the problem? Creating safe communities for woman could only save their lives. There are protective and empowering factors that foster re-silence, mindfulness and ground women. Meditation also empowers women but does empowering alone bring solution to these problems? Creating harmonious and safe families will empower the community as a whole and not just women alone.

I acknowledge that social structures are harder to change but once targeted will result in more sustainable improvement in women’s well-being. Indeed there is no health without mental health. Change is only a thought away—let us create safe families for women to live a healthy long life.