Edited by Bhargavi Davar

The gender perspective is largely lacking in the discourse on mental health in India while the debate on women′s issues rarely incorporates this important topic. Bringing together original contributions from a variety of perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, literature and media studies, this volume will greatly assist a holistic understanding of issues relating to the mental health of Indian women.

This book is an outcome of a national conference on women and mental health, organised by Anveshi in 1996. The conference brought together psychiatrists, social workers, feminists and mental health self-help groups. 

Table of Contents:

1. Gender and Mental Health: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives / Bhargavi V. Davar
2. Mental Health of Indian Women: A Field Experience / Ajita Chakraborty
3. Gender Issues in Mental Health: A Clinical Psychology Perspective / Anisha Shah
4. From the Personal to the Collective: Psychological/Feminist Issues of Women’s Mental Health / U. Vindhya
5. Further Considerations on Women and Mental Health / Sasheej Hegde
The Body, Reproduction and Mental Health
6. The Interface between Psychiatry and Women’s Reproductive Health / Prabha S. Chandra
7. Gynaecological Morbidity and Common Mental Disorders in Low-income Urban Women in Mumbai / Surinder K.P. Jaswal
8. The Female Body as the Battleground of Meaning / Janet Chawla and Sarah Pinto
9. The Female Body of Possession: A Feminist Perspective on Rural Tamil Women’s Experiences / Kalpana Ram
Violence and Mental Health
10. The Unsafe Nest: Analysing and Treating the Roots and Reaches of Marital Violence / Rajalakshmi Sriram and Sudipta Mukherjee
11. Self-disclosure in Child Sexual Abuse: Content Analysis of Written Narratives of Disclosure / L. Kavitha Vijayalakshmi and Shekhar Seshadri
12. Child Sexual Abuse and Social Factors Preventing Disclosure: Adolescent Girls’ Narratives / Rinchin and Shubhada Maitra
13. Sexual Violence and Mental Health: Confronting the Paradox of the ‘Guilty’ Victim / Kavita Panjabi
14. Inscribing Madness: Another Reading of the Yellow Wallpaper and the Bell Jar / Jayasree Kalathil
Women, Society and Mental Illness
15. The Lay and Medical Diagnoses of Psychiatric Disorder and the Normative Construction of Femininity / Renu Addlakha
16. Women and the Law on Unsoundness of Mind / Amita Dhanda
17. The Media and Women’s Mental Health / Ammu Joseph

ISBN-13: 978-0761994770

Published by SAGE Publications (2001)

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