MAPPING MENTAL HEALTH STATUS OF WOMEN IN INDIA

Abstract

Along with general health, depression is employed as a measure of mental well-being. Women consistently report lower levels of mental well-being, as assessed by depression, across countries. This study tries to find out the most important determinants of women’s mental health and then applies a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique using longitudinal Aging survey of India (LASI, 2017-18) to examine the relative contribution of these factors in mental health gap by gender. This has found out that 80 percent of the raw difference between mean of their (males and females) health is accounted for by differences in characteristics like education, working, caste etc. and with education the single most important factor while 20 percent difference is due to discrimination. Also, the factors which affect the most part of mental health of women are marital status, working status, education and psychiatric problems, etc.