Across centuries, with the brutality of sati, the social exile of widows, the ritualisation of women’s suffering, distress has been inherited by Indian women silently down generations. How has this translated into the mental health of women today? This was one of the questions asked by child, adolescent and family psychiatrist Dr Zirak Marker during a session on the ‘silent distress of young women’ at the second edition of Mpowering Minds 2026 in Bengaluru.
There is a misconception that young women are less resilient today, said Dr Shyam Bhat, psychiatrist and founder of the Nirvikalpa Foundation. But this is not true. Something unprecedented is happening among women today, where they have to balance being assertive, competitive and strong with being gentle, soft and nourishing. Young women, said Bhat, have taken up more than previous generations.
Other panellists at the session included Jasmine Kalha, co-director and senior research fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy, ILS, Pune and Meenakshi Kirtane, founder and director of Maanas The Inside Story and founding president, Indian Psychodrama Association.
Marker also brought up the issue of the increasing prevalence of self-harm and suicide among young women, with suicide being the leading cause of death among women aged between 16 and 29. Kalha reiterated that suicide is not a mental health problem alone. It is also due to domestic violence, lack of agency for women and ingrained patriarchy. The sociological factors leading to suicide are as important. Therefore, narrowing down the issue of suicide to a mental health problem alone is being reductionist.
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Meenakshi stressed the importance of celebrating the birth of every girl child. None should feel excluded or unwanted because the family preferred a male child. “She should not feel like a secondary citizen,” she said. The mental health scenario in India needs familial interventions to encourage the cherishing of every girl child, she said.
She also stressed the importance of children being educated in mental health. “Psychological literacy is not given importance in our schools,” she said. “Every citizen of the world has a right to know their psyche. We know about our biology, but when it comes to our psyche, people draw a blank. Everyone has an emotional system, an attachment system—we need to educate on all this. When the country needed technology, we came up with IITs; when it needed management studies, we came up with IIMs, maybe now it is time for an Indian Institute of Psychotherapy.”
The panellists also weighed in on girls being woke today and hyper-labelling themselves. Twelve-year-olds come to the psychotherapist with a diagnosis in their head. They describe themselves as being anxious or suffering from depression. Bhat called it “the toxicity of hyper-individualism that has seeped into the therapeutic language”. He said we need to learn to be who we are without copying the Western concept of embracing an inflexible, rigid identity.
