Adolescent Mental Health and Care Giving: Are Indian Parents Informed and Sensitive?

Adolescent Mental Health and Care Giving: Are Indian Parents Informed and Sensitive?

As individuals of the 21^st century everyone is exposed quite well to the happenings all over the world in regard to mental health of adolescents and how they are treated and now these things matter to people.

From the day to day happenings that come up in the various forms of media we can say that only in the developed parts of our country adolescent mental health is something that people give a thought. But in the other parts people never consider it unless and until it is very serious.

Mental health problems like anxiety, depression that are not expressed as well as the complex problems like schizophrenia or substance abuse go unrecognized and this is only because parents are not that much informed about these problems. Lack of knowledge on these problems also makes them unaware of the situation of their child.

In one of the most recent cases in a famous school of Kolkata, where a class 10 student committed suicide in a very menacing way and till this occurred no one in the family or friends knew about the mental condition of the girl, how much she was suffering throughout her childhood and more surprisingly this city took place in a metropolitan city like Kolkata.

Parents except some are not much aware about the mental health of teenagers compared to the developed countries. As a result they are not able to give sufficient care and mental support to their children. Probably here we can blame the generation gap and the typical orthodox Indian mentality of parents. But as time is passing by the new generations are becoming more aware and educated of the problems about adolescents’ mental health and hopefully soon they will become a sensitive, care-giving set of modern parents.

PATRIARCHY SYSTEM AND MENTAL HEALTH

PATRIARCHY SYSTEM AND MENTAL HEALTH

In 1993, WHO published a report on psychosocial factors and women’s mental health and talked in-depth about the link between the increased prevalence of mental health issues in women and their vulnerable location in a patriarchal society. Patriarchal society plays a serious role to damage the mental health, especially on women in India.

There are different stages of life where our society can act upon the mental health:

Childhood and the Beginning of Imposition:

Sandra Bem came up with the Gender Schema Theory in 1981 that reflects upon children learning to adapt roles assigned to their gender, starting from birth. A child is taught how they should look, how much they have started to weigh, what they should wear. Parents being worried about all these things when the children are as young as 10. In schools, little girls are literally taught how to sit, keeping their legs closed!

Adolescence:

Being a part of a patriarchal society and moreover a patriarchal family, an adolescent teenager feels short of helping hands when it comes to the question of his or her change in body and mind. Their emotions were tagged as ‘this is what boys/girls do’, be it combusting into tears, inability to control emotions or feeling overwhelmed. This often leads a teenager to depression and anxiety.

Construction of Marriage and Domestic Violence:

In patriarchal society marriage divides the power between men and women in the face of intimacy between them. A woman has been a victim of humiliation, torture and exploitation. There are many episodes of rape, murder, dowry, burning, wife beating and discrimination in this society. Violence towards women by men is a system of power. Much of it happens within a spousal setting. In patriarchal society marriage is an oppressive form that disguises the structural occupation of men in women’s lives. Hence women are a victim of male domination in the respective sphere of life; especially in economic life, over decision making on resources, on the utilization of her earnings and her body. Hence, a woman’s life lies between pleasures at one end and danger at another end.end and danger at another en

Motherhood, Fatherhood and Mental Health:

During pregnancy, women are at the receiving end of a flood of ‘advice’ from family and friends. Recently, the Indian Government also joined the bandwagon when the AYUSH ministry issued a statement advising women to give up meat during pregnancy.Postpartum depression (PPD) can be attributed to the lack of comprehensive care and support. Often a pregnant is forced and abused to produce a boy, which propagates to several suicides and murder by in-laws in India. A man is forced have a baby as soon as he gets married. Any kind of sextual incapability is a worst thing to have and it cannot be cured for Indian men, thanks to our patriarchal society.

In this society women suffer from the denial of freedom, unequal and inferior status and even untouchability. And marriage is basically the reflection of the patriarchal structure. Until the society changes for its betterment, it will continue to penalise women for their gender and the more women will get mentally affected by it.

GROWING SUICIDE ATTEMPTS IN INDIA

GROWING SUICIDE ATTEMPTS IN INDIA

Cognitive constriction is often described as a feeling of tunnel vision, as if you’re seeing through a straw or wearing blinders. People in this state can’t see beyond their circumstances, and don’t believe their pain will ever end. That’s why we often hear suicide attempt survivors say, “I thought that was the only way out”. Ever thought what pushes them to the edge and leaves their minds completely ravaged until this seems the only way to end all the traumas, the depressions, the slow consuming fears and ultimately the little life that was given to them?

According to the statistics, 135,000 people die by suicide in India with especially higher rates in the southern and eastern states. If Indian states were countries, three states would have the third, fourth and fifth worst rates of female suicide in the world. Although suicide is a deeply personal act, suicidal behavior is determined by a number of individual as well as social factors. The main causes for suicide in India have been marriage settlement issues, dowry issues, family problems, illness, problems in schools such as ragging, failure in examinations etc.  Like everywhere else in the world suicide attempts in India have also been progressively increasing. While doing my research on this particular topic, I came across headlines all over the internet, “One suicide attempt every three seconds”, “Every hour one student commits suicide in India” and as a fellow national nothing made my heart drop more than this. This is the alarming cry of the hour.

As a person slowly succumbs to depression, the person finds in oneself the inability to express strong negative feelings, feeling distant from others which results in a tendency to withdraw oneself from friends and family members. This is when you know my friend that you are walking your way into your path of abyss from where there’s no guaranteed return.  During these times it is important to keep in mind that the most effective way to relieve yourself from this stress is to share your troubles with anyone you feel comfortable. The time is ripe and for mental health professionals and psychiatrists to adopt proactive and leadership roles in suicide prevention and save the lives of thousands of Indian on the verge of ending themselves.

FEMINISM AND MENTAL HEALTH

Feminisn and Mental Health

Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression in economic, political, sociological fields. This movement has worked for the degraded physical and mental state of women. Feminism has its roots in France when a French philosopher Charles Fourier coined the word and by the first half of 20^th century the ideologies of feminism reached Europe and U.S. Within the feminist activities we find two ideologies, the one which celebrate the difference and respect the other gender by retaining their identity while the other which regards this difference to the problem and thrive for equality.

Feminism and mental health are integrally connected. Women often suffered from mental illness like “depression”,”anxiety”,and “panic disorder” due to subjugation, poor mental support and patriarchy. Women are often considered crazy and this issue dates back in the 19^th century when the word “hysteria” was used to sum up any women’s health disorder, because hysteria seemed to be a gendered diagnosis as the doctors didn’t take women seriously. We can trace it in the works of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and mostly in Rochester’s Wife where Bertha Mason is diagnosed by her husband who locks her into a room and comforts her within those four walls. This work gave rise to Gilbert and Guber’s "The Mad Women in the Attic".

The most common illness anxiety affects most of the adults in the world. People, who live with depression worldwide specially women, experience twice as often as men. Stress disorder affects women more than men and the leading cause is Rape! Women experiencing higher rates of mental illness are particularly linked with the subjugation of women in daily life, that the feminist fight for. In a study published in the journal Sex Roles, researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas and Georgia State University found out that there is a link between physical safety concerns and psychological distress. Often women subjected to mental or physical torture have tried to protect themselves by developing strategies of passivity, dissociation from body, rejecting the idea of being in a feminine role, try to become manly or self inflicted violence.

Feminism if thoroughly studied is not only about women, it is about the establishment of equality for both genders but through several ages and perspectives the idea has been distorted. Nowadays mostly this idea means protection of women oriented issue which involves subjugation of men. The original ideology is lost and men have started to grow hatred against feminism. Women have stated to misuse the idea for their own purpose. For example, they can accuse an innocent man for exploitation or molestation easily than the man who seeks to prove himself innocent. Mental health also pertains to men as well. Men who are raped also have higher rates of stress disorder and are more likely to develop schizophrenia than women. Today’s world is experiencing a wave of feminism and a parallel growth of misogynism due to misuse of feminism movement.

MENTAL ILLNESS IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Mental Illness is not an excuse for Sexual harassment

According to popular perception mental illness and violence go hand in hand. Contrary to this, research shows that mental illness survivors are more likely to be the victims and what we find nowadays are certain behavioural instincts and patterns that are enabled by patriarchal mindsets. Many of the accused do not even consider their actions as an act of abuse or harassment or violence and defend themselves by marking them as casual flirting, banter, poor judgement, mixed signals, provocation by the victim and so on.

Mental illness, for example schizophrenia makes a person dysfunctional in everyday life but predatory behaviour is just a manipulative behaviour. The kind of emotional manipulation and calculated behavioural patterns that are exerted by sexual abusers are not the kind of behaviour a person with serious mental illness would be capable of. Sexual misconduct is a calculated move, driven by sexual instincts into acts of violence against the victim. Sadaf Vidha, a Mumbai-based psychologist whose clients include survivors of gender-based violence says, “Think about it while reversing the roles – when women or minorities suffer from mental health issues, do we see them automatically abusing or assaulting other people?” In simple terms, mental illness may or may not exist in abusers but the abuse they inflict is behaviour and not a symptom, concluded by Nancy Erickson, an attorney and consultant on domestic violence and legal issues.

Mostly women are viewed as sexual objects and not human. Workplace harassment is a common one including in the list: education industry, civil service, banking industries, hospitality, marketing and fashion industry. Making a woman wear explicit clothing only to boost an industrial growth in sales and marketing is a cruel act of sexual harassment. Even public space is an area worth mentioning, trains, buses, subways, market are areas where people can be touched unpleasantly and intentionally, stalked, stared, or even forcibly exposed to another person’s genitalia. Objectification of women is a major source of sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment cases today are occurring at an alarming rate. Many cases aren’t reported because the women are afraid and are sometimes under threat. Sexual harassment whether inflicted upon a male or female, is a cruel act affecting the victim’s mental health leading them into depression, anxiety disorder.

MENTAL HEALTH IN INDIA: ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Mental health in India: Issues and concerns

Mental health crisis is a serious problem in India, as according to a report by the WHO, an estimated 56 million people suffering from depression and 38 million from anxiety disorders. Mental distress is a key reason why one student commits suicide every hour in the country.

However, the attitude of many Indians towards this problem isn’t helping.

According to The Live Love Laugh Foundation (TLLLF) and Kantar Public, a survey of 3,556 respondents from eight cities across India, an astonishing 47% could be categorised as being highly judgmental of people perceived as having a mental illness. Respondents belonging in this category were more likely to say that one should keep a safe distance from those who are depressed, or that talking to a mentally unhealthy person could affect the mental health of others. 26% were labelled as being afraid of the mentally ill. Interestingly, these two categories were mostly belonging to higher socio-economic backgrounds and were more educated compared to the 27% who were supportive of people with mental illnesses. These group were younger (aged between 18 and 24), with relatively lower educational levels, and came from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

A significant section of the respondent reported feeling fear, apathy, anger and even disgust at times despite most of them has shown sympathy for them.

The issue of the mental health in India remains significantly as people with mental illness mostly avoid discussing their mental concerns openly due to the fear of being tagged or judged. Moreover, some people believe that mental illness happens to the people who are ‘mentally weak’.

And for those who overcome the social taboo and do want to see a professional, there remains a problem too as in India, the population is over 1.3 billion whereas there are just 5,000 psychiatrists and less than 2,000 clinical psychologists. Mental health workforce in India include psychiatrists (0.0003%), nurses (0.00012%), psychologists (0.00007%) and social workers (0.00007%), which is hardly enough.

MENTAL HEALTH OF WOMEN IN INDIA

MENTAL HEALTH OF WOMEN IN INDIA

Gender roles impact identity in both man and woman. Gender differences are based in physical, physiological and psychological attributes. For centuries, the differences between men and women have been socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism and this is where the concept of ‘patriarchy system’ comes. And most of the time women stay submissive in Indian society and this leads to poor mental health of women. The statistics indicates that there are profound differences of psychological distress and psychological disorders between men and women.

WHAT IS MENTAL HEALTH AND MENTAL DISORDER?

The term ‘mental health’ basically describes a person’s cognitive or emotional well-being. This includes a person’s ability to enjoy life and achieve psychological resilience.

‘Mental disorder’ is a change in behavioral pattern of a person (causing distress) which is not expected as a part of normal development or culture.

COMMON REASONS BEHIND POOR MENTAL HEALTH OF WOMEN IN INDIA

·       Gender-based discrimination

·       Belonging from an economically under-developed family

·       Hormonal factors

·       Getting less attention from family

·       Always being compared with other male members of family

·       Pregnancy

·       Domestic violence

·       Abusive husband

·       Sexual or physical harassment

·       Being widowed or separated

·       Having low autonomy in decision making

·       Getting raped

·       Financial insecurity

·       Sexual trafficking

·       Public humiliation

·       Experiencing menopause

·       Cultural differences

·       Gender barriers

MOST COMMON MENTAL DISORDERS OF WOMEN IN INDIA

·       Anxiety disorders- A mental disorder that is characterized by significant feeling of anxiety and fear.

·       Depressive disorders- A serious mental disorder that negatively affects a person’s lifestyle.

·       Substance use disorder- This disorder takes away the ability to control a drug’s use.

·       Somatic symptom disorder- This disorder makes the person to extreme focus on physical symptoms.

·       Unipolar depressive disorder- Persistent sadness and showing least interest in outside stimuli.

Symptoms of depression, anxiety and other unspecified psychological distress are 2-3 times more common among women.

SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS

·       Schizophrenia- A disorder that affects the person’s ability to feel, think and behave properly.

·        Bipolar disorder- A mental disorder marked by alternating period of elation and depression.

Though these disorders are less prevalent than common mental disorders, still the taboo associated with these diseases makes these chronic.

Currently India is world’s most depressive country and so are the women of India. When a woman is mentally ill the services are sought infrequent and late and the ill may get abandoned by her family. The only reason is the subject ‘mental illness’ is still ostracized in Indian society. Women go through a lot of thing in their entire life. All they need is proper support from their family to be mentally strong. All the social, economic, legal, infrastructural and environmental facts that hampers women’s mental condition needs to be fixed as soon as possible. 

The fundamental need for a girl is education and this has to be started from the early childhood. It is a family’s responsibility to educate a girl child, make her strong enough to fight exploitation and injustice, aware her of what is wrong and what is right, what is acceptable and what is not, make her understand how desperately a girl need economic independence and support her through the course of the time.