Sunday, May 19, 2002		Books

A critique of mental health issues that affect women
Uma Vasudeva

Mental Health from a Gender Perspective,
edited by Bhargavi V. Davar, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 427, Price Rs 595.

EARLIER the concept of 'gender and mental health' had not been known till the early nineties. However it became audible in many professional and feminist circles by the year 1995. The awareness of the need for mental health for women became more pronounced subsequently.

The author in this volume has shown that even to pose a problem simply as that between feminists and professionals, between the mainstream and the radical, between professional and consumer, can be misleading.

The book has been divided into four parts. In Part I, review of the domain of women and mental health has been carried out. As women are the affected parties, it became essential for the author to analyse their contributions as well as their limitations.

Part II and III cover the theme of mental health issues pertaining to the body, sexuality, reproduction and violence against women. Violence against women like rape and sexual harassment are common features in present-day society. The author has come out with the causes of these violent acts on the part of a few sex hungry antisocial elements.

Part IV examines the multiple interphases between gender, diagnoses, and society in the hospital psychiatric wards, then courts and the media.

The authors' experience in the psychiatric wards and the cross examination of the rape victims in the courts are appalling.

There is epistemological movement in each part of the book. This movement is the basis for the organisation of the chapters. The papers are organised in terms of their sameness and/or difference regarding scientific epistemologies. The locations range from realist positions about the validity and objectivity of science to critical anti-science, anti-realist, phenomenological, hermeneutic or deconstructionist positions.

In order to demystify some commonly held opinions, that scientific realism may be upheld not only by the mental and behavioural scientists, and therapists, but also feminists. Sriram and Mukherjee have analysed the roots and reaches of marital violence and the methods of treating them. Chakrobarty, Vijyalakshmi and Seshadri, the mental health professionals, chose the phenomenological approach to understand the human behaviour. There are a variety of epistemological positions within feminism, the social sciences and the behavioural sciences; and what divides beliefs and opinions between the professionals and the feminists is not always the type of epistemology espoused.

Hegde's paper in the book is a critical self-reflection on this book itself - about the possibilities and limitations of realist positions for a philosophy of social science in general, and for the emergent discourse on women and mental health in particular.

The collection of essays in this book gives an idea of how the contributors have negotiated their own disciplines in resolving their epistemological tensions of science vs. culture, nature vs. nature, truth vs. narrative, individuals vs. community, fact vs. experience, man vs. woman, and so on in addressing the domain of mental health and women.

Realist and anti-realist epistemologies can have different implications for therapy. These differences can further be accentuated by whether the therapy is feminist or not. Realism about human behaviour stresses the sameness of individuals over differences. The universal aspect of being human is privileged over the particular and is argued that over and beyond contextual differences, there is something common to all individuals. These common aspects may be biological, but equally, they may also be behavioural, cognitive, psycho-social and so on.

The feminist papers by Kalathil, Panjabi, Chawla, Pinto, and Ram describe the therapeutic effectiveness of social behaviours of women who are rooted within community life. The anti-realist, anti-science feminist papers in this book see intervention in political terms, and feminist resistance to oppression, whether open or indirect, is argued to be an important intervention strategy contributing to women's mental health.

The book explores perspectives from clinical work and community practices and addresses themes relating to both intervention and advocacy.