Sadaf Khursheed
Srinagar, Dec 07 (KNB): In psycology, stress is a feeling of strain and pressure or any unpleasant emotion and feeling. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Excessive amounts of stress, however, may lead to greater harm. Stress can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and mental illnesses such as depression. Stress may be defined as internal due to some factors or may be external as the environment may be such.
Stress in Kashmir may be attributed to the external factors, the long years of conflict have been instrumental in creating a fear psychosis which has ultimately lead to rise in mental illnesses. Both the genders have equally been affected but the woman folk has been on the forefront.
This gender which mostly used to remain indoors has been subjected to massive injustice be it the mass rapes, torture or being half widows. The crimes against women folk also went unnoticed because of the social stigma associated with it. Many women who were raped or tortured preferred to remain silent as they were mostly of marriageable age and the stain of being a rape victim would cost heavily on her married life. The unfortunate incident of 21 February 1991still haunt the victims of Kunan Poshpora (Kupwara) who are not able to come out of that trauma and have been confined to their homes only.Those girls seldom come out of their homes and prefer not to get education as for them the stress at a very large scale is thus haunting. Many women lost their sons and partners in the conflict and the safety of the other members who used to stay outside disturbed those more.
There are many people who are languishing in jails and their sisters and mothers back home have been suffering a lot causing rise in the mental tension.
Many similar other incidents like the same have caused mental disturbances in the lives of woman folk and they ultimately get into depression. The valley has seen an incredible rise in the number of depression cases
An expert while talking to Kashmir News Bureau stated – “ Other than the conflict issues, that have caused large scale rise in depression cases in Women and they are also not getting married at right age. The factors behind this may be multifarious but the most immediate ones are not getting a suitable match. The rise in unemployment is also a major issue when both the sides prefer government employees and the result is that women are married late which cause them to have children at late age again disturbing the mental health of both mother and the child.”
6There may be many factors behind the trauma that the present Women generation face but we need to look into the deeper causes and save the coming generations from the same. (KNB)