Bhargavi V. Davar
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199453535
- eISBN:
- 9780199085408
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199453535.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
‘Healthing’ is a process and an everyday practice, and women struggle with establishing a routine about it, which we can repeat every day. What brings sustaining states of wellness and freedom from a ...
More
‘Healthing’ is a process and an everyday practice, and women struggle with establishing a routine about it, which we can repeat every day. What brings sustaining states of wellness and freedom from a sense of malaise is insight and self-reflection, and for some who have been through psychosocial stresses, this is a life career, of living in mindfulness, building insight, and experiencing the self as so many thresholds of transition and transformation. We search for knowledge(s) which reflect our lived realities of disability and wellness, and which respond to our identity questions. This chapter talks about the everydayness of emotional suffering, the construction of identities and choices through this process, using an archive of women’s narratives.Less
‘Healthing’ is a process and an everyday practice, and women struggle with establishing a routine about it, which we can repeat every day. What brings sustaining states of wellness and freedom from a sense of malaise is insight and self-reflection, and for some who have been through psychosocial stresses, this is a life career, of living in mindfulness, building insight, and experiencing the self as so many thresholds of transition and transformation. We search for knowledge(s) which reflect our lived realities of disability and wellness, and which respond to our identity questions. This chapter talks about the everydayness of emotional suffering, the construction of identities and choices through this process, using an archive of women’s narratives.
Bhargavi V. Davar and T. K. Sundari Ravindran (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199453535
- eISBN:
- 9780199085408
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199453535.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
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 ...
More
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 chapters focus on the state of mental health of Indian women, with respect to social attitudes, cultural barriers, treatment, policies, safeguards, or lack thereof. The chapters 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.Less
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 chapters focus on the state of mental health of Indian women, with respect to social attitudes, cultural barriers, treatment, policies, safeguards, or lack thereof. The chapters 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.
