Double Stigmatization: Fighting with Mental Illness and Womanhood

Social, economic, cultural factors play a dominant role in identification and formation of disease in our society though disease is biomedical. Stigma creates fear and negative attitude towards stigmatized in the society. Women are constructed as the most marginalized group in the society. The rigid hold of repressive social structures impacts the lives of people in tradition-driven countries like India to a greater extent than they seemingly do in Western countries. Women in such societies are doubly stigmatized when they bear the tag of mental illness. In this paper I will analyze case studies of Assam to describe how traditional Indian patriarchal attitude towards mental illness has destroyed the lives of many Indian women.