In this world, women assume to work in various roles such as mother, wife, daughter, professional, caregiver, and homemaker. While handling all these roles, women silently bear emotional and psychological burdens. Despite of the increasing awareness around mental health, women often ignore their own mental health. They assume their struggles as a normal part of life. Many times this negligence becomes their cultural, social, biological, and structural factors.
1. Social Conditioning and Gender Expectations
From a young age, girls are conditioned to be caretakers, and self-sacrificing individuals. Girls are raised to prioritize the needs of other like family, children, spouses, before themselves. They are repeatedly farmed across homes, films, and media. As a result, many women internalize the belief that their struggles are insignificant, and that caring for others is more important than caring for themselves. This results in emotional burnout, depression and anxiety. They also suffer weakness.
2. Lack of Awareness and Education About Mental Health
In countries like India, many communities, especially in rural areas, consider mental health to be a taboo. Women might know or feel when they feel “low” or “angry for no reason,” but lack the information and literacy they are label these feelings as stress, anxiety, postnatal depression, or burnout as a normal daily life routine. Improving literacy and raising awareness and making this normalisation, will help the women to understand themselves
3. Stigma Around Mental Health
The stigma attached to mental health is one big reason that affects women, bearing a heavier burden. Seeking help might lead to being labelled as weak, mentally unstable, emotional or hormonal change. This fear of misunderstanding prevents women from seeking help from a professional, family or friends, and this fear is more often in conservative families.
4. Overwhelming Responsibilities and No Time for Self
It has been seen that women as housewives, professionals, or both, most women live under the pressure of day-to-day activities like cooking, cleaning, managing children’s studies and health, social obligations, and sometimes taking care of elderly parents. In all this responsibilities their self care and her own priority are lost. And they think “ we don’t have time for my self”, “ I have to take care of all my family first” etc.
5. Postnatal and Hormonal Mental Health Issues Are Dismissed
Many mental health challenges in women are not only society or family-driven but also biologically driven, which are linked to menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, or hormonal imbalances. Conditions like menopausal mood swings, postnatal depression, all these are real medical issues, but women ignore them, thinking that they will get over them in a few days, and they suffer more.
6. Financial Dependency and Lack of Access
In countries like India, women are not financially independent or don’t have any source of income. Paying for therapy, medication, wellness or even education alone to seek help might be a challenge for them. Currently affording mental health services are not easily available for rural or semi-urban areas.
7. Fear of Disruption in Family and Marital Life
Fear in women to acknowledge their mental health is also a problem because it may affect their marital life, being treated as abnormal, problems with relatives and known ones. So they decide to keep silent to avoid any misunderstanding.
8. Influence of Social Media and Unrealistic Comparisons
In past few years Social media has added a new pressure. Now, Women constantly see curated images of perfect Beauty, Body, Happy Life, Happy Families with leads to comparison, feeling Guilty, anxiety and depression in this movement they blame themselves instead of seeking help.
Need a Supportive environment for women
Women are the emotional to of their families, children, communities, and society compared to men. They often neglect their mental well-being in the process of managing everything for everyone. Ignoring mental health is affecting the woman, and in connection, it affects her children, her marriage, her work, and her future. To avoid this, we have to create a society or environment we women feel safe and supported to keep their thoughts and feelings.