Examining women's health through a psychosocial lens

During the COPASAH Global Symposium 2019, a group of therapists and mental health practitioners tried to highlight the issue of women's mental health with two specific focuses, one being the lived experiences of persons living with mental illness and the secondary burn-out and shame faced by their caretakers. The second session explored the contours of somatisation that is often seen in the human body as a result of the impact of trauma. The participants reflected on the value of lived experiences and also discussed the challenges faced in getting representation for people living with mental illness. The challenges listed by participants were concentrated around the participation and representation of persons living with intellectual disability and psychosocial disability. Somatisation of traumatic experiences needs recognition in a country like India where women's life-stressors exist right from childhood that keeps them on the threshold of mental illness and/or psychosomatic illnesses. Psychosocial health issues are relegated to a subordinate category of discussion while public health, reproductive health, and health rights feature in mainstream discussions in various seminars, researches and conferences in India. This paper is based on two sessions of the COPASAH Global Symposium 2019 and focuses on the gender and psychosocial dimensions of health from the framework of women being subjected to unpaid care work, through social and reproductive labour and stressors resulting in psycho-social distress. To this end, it is important to build a community of practitioners that looks beyond the reproductive health of women.