Women & Mental Health. World Womens day.

Contributed by

Dr. Arif Maghribi Khan.MD

Consultant Psychiatrist 

Connect with Dr Arif Maghribi Khan

Mental health problems are always unfortunately stigmatized, we can say safely around the world females are most commonly affected than males and unfortunately  get least help. While anxiety disorders or Psychotic disorders before pregnancy easily get attention but the following group of stress disorders do not get much attention during or after pregnancy.

A  miscarriages  easily causes  depression. The symptoms include sad mood, anger, blame game, and being jealous of all. Since most of her relatives’ are sympathetic towards her rather than empathetic, it causes loss of self esteem and feeling alone.

Depression after pregnancy:

Even in this decade, any part of the world, the birth of a girl child is an unwelcome event. Many of us want to have at-least one male child, and in the meantime many female children are born, which results in deterioration of mothers health, both physical and psychological.   Even in 2023 female babies were abandoned in some  hospitals.

Male children are considered as blessings by some families, although females worldover  are doing all kinds of strenuous jobs like in the police, teaching, becoming pilots etc. They have proven they are no way lesser than their male counterparts because of  dedication and hardwork. 

Females get more stress than males even if they are earning .

Sadly working women have to do two jobs, at the office and at home.

We do not appreciate such working women.For example cooking .  Ideally both males and females can cook as cooking is not a gender specific job. But why husband has wife to cook and not vice versa.

Once upon a time joint families with grandmothers, grandfathers were best counselors to newly wedded couples from child birth to their adolescence life, but now due to increasing trend of nuclear families, even sickness of baby, awakening the parents causes severe distress to the lactating mother.

Mother is severely depleted of proper sleeping hours. In such cases other family members must provide a protective shield to her. Adequate sleep for pregnant and lactating mothers is the best gift we can give her.

Among my clients I have found a large number of lactating mothers, working mostly in the private sector , getting a curtailed maternity leave, which as human beings must concern all of us  . Companies need to be taken to the task and severe punishment must be given to such companies 

Government has made a compassionate policy for maternity leave, but in all sectors be it education or Private Companies, quite often unnecessary hurdles are created by senior staff.

Pregnant mothers who are diagnosed with depression or O.C.D, their medicine should be closely monitored by their respective psychiatrists.

Lastly, caring for the newborn should not be the responsibility of mother only, it’s the right time that fathers should play a proactive role rather than reactive role and remember we all need eight hours of sleep, to keep our body rejuvenated. 

(Author can be mailed at arifmaghribi@yahoo.com)

View in browser :The Health Guide 

Contribute an article 

Join the mailing List of The Health Guide 

Review The Health Guide