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The Stree Arogya Shodh: investigating gynaecological morbidities and women's mental health in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Vikram Patel
Vikram Patel*
Affiliation:
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Sangath, Goa, India, email [email protected]
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Gynaecological complaints have long been associated with poor mental health, in particular depression and anxiety, in higher-income countries. Lower abdominal pain (both menstrual and non-menstrual) and pelvic pain are considered the hallmark gynaecological symptoms associated with somatoform, stress-related and neurotic disorders (the ‘common mental disorders', CMDs). Cultural and social factors heavily influence the expression of somatic symptoms and metaphors for emotional distress, but little is known about gynaecological psychosomatic clinical syndromes in non-Western cultures, despite the enormous global health significance of gynaecological symptoms. This paper considers the specific example of the syndrome of abnormal vaginal discharge (AVD) in India.

Type
Thematic Papers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 86 - 88
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2009

References

Patel, V. & Oomman, N. M. (1999) Mental health matters too: gynecological morbidity and depression in South Asia. Reproductive Health Matters, 7, 30–38.Google Scholar
Patel, V., Kirkwood, B. R., Pednekar, S., et al (2006a) Gender disadvantage and reproductive health risk factors for common mental disorders in women: a community survey in India. Archives of General Psychiatry, 63, 404–413.Google Scholar
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Patel, V., Weiss, H. A., Kirkwood, B. R., et al (2006c) Common genital complaints in women: the contribution of psychosocial and infectious factors in a population-based cohort study in Goa, India. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35, 1478–1485.Google Scholar
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Patel, V., Andrew, G. & Pelto, P. J. (2008) The psychological and social contexts of complaints of abnormal vaginal discharge: a study of illness narratives in India. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 64, 255–262.Google Scholar
Shahmanesh, M., Wayal, S., Cowan, F., et al (2009) Suicidal behaviour among female sex workers in Goa, India: the silent epidemic. American Journal of Public Health, 99, 1239–1246.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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