Women's Mental Illness Problem

The homeless mentally ill, especially in the cities of India, are typically battered, bruised, brutally abused, both physically and sexually, ignored by everybody, eating out of garbage bins and have no place to call home. They are an invisible minority and stay invisible for the most part.

Mental illness is viewed differently by society depending on the level of education. Very few among the uneducated and/or illiterate in India see it as an illness. Instead, they view it as something with spiritual and mystical (rather than medical) causes. This view is not commonly shared in urban areas, especially among the educated. They often live in denial that mental illness could “happen” to them.

Women face the greatest problems including being abandoned by their families following psychiatric illness. Many women get forced out of their homes and wander from their communities across the country and end up on the streets of the bigger cities.

Women's Mental Illness Barriers

Apart from the actual costs incurred in the treatment and rehabilitation of the mentally ill, there are issues that are specific to mental illness.

For one, society at large does not recognize it as an illness of the brain that is treatable and it does not get the public empathy that an overtly physical ailment like HIV/AIDs or tuberculosis gets. There is also the issue of compliance – the affected people and caregivers lack the understanding that the medications are possibly life-long.

These issues are being addressed – sometimes at a more global level by organizations like ACMI (Action for Mental Illness: www.acmiindia.org) or at an individual level by organizations like The Banyan (www.thebanyan.org).