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.