Main description:

Steeped in archaic and narrow colonial attitudes towards people of 'unsound mind', the discourse on mental health in India, as also the public apparatus dealing with it, are rigid, exclusionary, and deeply gender insensitive. Interrogating the ways in which we understand and deal with mental health disabilities, this volume unravels the voices of women trapped in the predominantly skewed discourse of mental ill-health as 'madness', within the sciences, legal systems,
policies, and the media.

The collection of essays in this volume focus on the state of mental health of Indian women, with respect to social attitudes, cultural barriers, treatment, policies, safeguards, or lack thereof. The contributors ask fundamental questions: Is 'mental illness' a social, medical, legal, penal, historical, personal construct? Is mental disorder a disability? Do people living with a mental ailment have a 'memory' or the 'insight' to tell their own stories? In dealing with these questions, it seeks
to provide a perspective on how women suffering from mental illness view themselves and their surroundings in India.

Combining primary research and insights from gender studies and mental health specialists, the volume presents a fundamental critique of the institutional responses to women's mental health, and highlights the dire need to overhaul the Indian mental health system.

Contents:

Preface ; Acknowledgements ; List of Abbreviations ; 1. Delivering Justice, Withdrawing Care: The Norms and Etiquettes of 'Having' a Mental Illness ; Bhargavi V. Davar ; 2. (Un)making Madness: Delving into the Depths of Knowledge ; Ranjita Biswas ; 3. Adjudicating Illness and Capacity: Notes from a Custody Trial ; Vasudha Nagaraj ; 4. Ideological Reproduction of Gender and Normality in Psychiatric Drug Advertisements ; Jayasree Kalathil ; 5. Mining Marginalities and Mainstreaming Differences: The Disability Paradigm in Perspective ; Renu Addlakha ; 6. Growing Up and Sexual Identity Formation: Mental Health Concerns of Lesbian Women ; Ketki Ranade and Yogita Hastak ; 7. A Researcher's Tale ; Shazneen Limjerwala ; 8. Women's Rights, Human Rights, and the State: Reconfiguring Gender and Mental Health Concerns in India ; Anubha Sood ; 9. Identity Constructions for 'Mentally Disturbed' Women: Identities versus Institutions ; Bhargavi V. Davar ; Index ; Notes on Editors and Contributors