The divorce rate in the Indian City Mumbai has significantly increased during the last two years, as with more rights awareness among the female population and high expectations, there is adjustment problems among the Indian couples.
Dr Syeda Rukhshada, the only female Muslim Family Psychiatrist in Mumbai, revealed this while exclusively talking to Business Recorder during her recent maiden visit to historic city of Lahore. Dr Syeda Rukhshada maintained that more and more cases of suicide attempts are being reported in Mumbai, which reflects existence of depression, anxiety, stress and other psychiatric problems there.
"Substance abuse is alarmingly on rise in Mumbai, which is causing various social problems", she added. She said that there were around 500 psychiatrists in Mumbai, while in whole India the number is over 4000, which is insufficient to cater to the psychiatric problems of huge population.
She said that quite a good number of Indian health professionals, including psychiatrists is proceeding abroad due to vast opportunities. This clearly shows that there is shortage of psychiatrists in India. About women's mental health, she said cases of mental disorders among women in India are two to three times more as compared to males.
"Preferential treatment towards males, disproportionate responsibilities and education opportunities, matrimonial dilemmas, poor mobility, no say in pregnancy and birth control, conflicts at home and work places, harassment and identity esteem issues are some of the major causes of mental problems", she said. She further said that unexpressed anger amongst women is a major cause of various psychological and psychosomatic disorders, while anger is often a reaction to the underlying feeling of inadequacy, failure, guilt or loss in an overwhelming stress.
Talking about suicide, she said that early marriages and hostile laws were major factors, which give rise to tendency of suicides and homicides among womenfolk.
"Earlier, it was perceived that Japan stood among few countries where suicide ratio is on the higher side. In India it was uncommon, but unfortunately it was going up", she said.
She quoted the WHO reports that over 450 million people are suffering from some form of neuro-psychiatric disorders of which around 121 million are suffering from depression and 800,000 die by suicide each year.
She said that depressive symptoms are frequent in psychiatric practice and are among the most common complaints in primary care. According to her, depression has been identified as a major public health problem and in terms of the burden of illness, it will rank second to ischaemic heart disease by 2020. She further said that the concept of mental illness in India has not so far fully developed as majority of people are still unable to comprehend the true nature of illness especially in terms of causation and treatment approaches.
Ironically, she said general practitioners knowledge and skills are inadequate in managing mental illness as increasing level of violence, coupled with economic problems and host of other factors, may be attributed as major cause for the rising incidence of mental disorders in India.
She said that feature of stigma linked with mental health issues results in reducing patients' access to resources and housing and job opportunities besides leading to low self-esteem isolation and hopelessness. She was of the view that childhood indicators of the problem are reflected in the form of physical problems, intellectual disabilities, low birth weight, multigenerational poverty and disruptive behaviours.
"In India, there is an important category of healers who by definition are those who claim to be in direct contact with the spiritual world and assume the responsibility of bringing cure through their spiritual connections. A large number of people in India have faith in the healing powers of such practitioners, hence holy places are flocked by the masses irrespective of educational or ethnic background seeking cure especially for mental illness," she added.
Talking about clinical depression, she said that men diagnosed with clinical depression are more than twice likely to develop coronary artery disease as non-depressed males.
"Clinical depression appears to be an independent risk factor for coronary artery disease, even several decades after the first episode of depression, which was linked to a greater overall risk of death, although it was not found to be associated with a higher risk of stroke. Symptoms of depression include irritability, marked loss of interest in daily activities, change in appetite, trouble sleeping at night, daily fatigue or energy loss and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide", she said.
To a query, she said that women, who are depressed, are more likely to develop brittle bones late in life. If they continue to have depression and continue to loose bone mineral density, they will enter menopause already at a significant risk for fracture.
Studies show that depressed women had up to 15-percent more bone loss than healthy women, and their chances of breaking a hip increased by 40-percent.
Dr Syeda Rukhshada, who also worked with Zakir Naik Foundation, said that it was rendering marvellous job for the cause of Islam and provision of quality education. She said that she had learnt a lot while working with the Foundation.
About stress, she said that various studies reveal that most illness is related to unrelieved stress. "If you are experiencing stress symptoms, you have gone beyond your optimal stress level; you need to reduce the stress in your life and/or improve your ability to manage it." Adolescents are exposed to increased rate of stressful life experiences and there is some evidence that increases in stressors account, at least in part, for the increased rates of psychological problems associated with this developmental period.
To another question, she said that in India private practice of doctors working in government hospitals is strictly prohibited. She said that the concept of tele-medicine is fast growing in India due to IT revolution and pre-occupations of people.
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