A new book highlights the lives of successful women leaders living with extreme mental illness

The family endured extraordinary ruptures — a decade-long disappearance of her mother and brother, followed years later by her brother’s suicide. As is the fate of many girl children, Kirpal was the caregiver, shielding her mother and her brother. The battle scars emerged later in life, leaving her diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in her 30s and an auto-immune disease called Sjogren’s. After years of struggling to hide or explain her mother’s mental illness from society, Kirpal dreaded how her own diagnosis might become her entire identity.

Shivhare uses focus fixations such as bedazzling to find an anchor to make sense of your thoughts. PIC/NIMESH DAVE

“If women have any severe mental health challenges, their lives are written off. There’s nothing else you can be known for, nothing else you can make of your life,” says Kirpal, now 45. “These are women who have led whole lives, that’s what we wanted to showcase through our book.” The book is an anthology that brings together women who have excelled in their own fields but have simultaneously suffered from severe mental illnesses. In India, Kirpal feels that a woman picks up on the shame associated with her mental health as a child itself. “Women are taught to associate their mental illness with secrecy and somehow it is her responsibility to not let this secret, associated with the family’s reputation, get out,” she says.

In their 2019 study, Mayo Clinic, Arizona found that women are twice as likely to suffer from depression as compared to men. Women are also much more likely to face sexual trauma, dowry abuse, and domestic violence, making them more vulnerable to stress-related mental illnesses. Biology and hormones are no friends either. All this combined with the social role of women as care-givers, nurturers, and protectors of family reputation, makes women hesitant to even seek help. 

Suppressing their own needs and bearing a disproportionate burden of caregiving can then trigger  further issues later in life. A 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 1,06,000 people in Sweden diagnosed with stress-related disorders. Researchers found that PTSD was linked to subsequent development of auto-immune diseases, such as in Kirpal’s case. 

To cope with all of this, she has spent a lot of her life cataloguing everything she’s been through. Writing is the one outlet that helped her make sense of the extreme chaos in her life. On the page, she could slow down the whirlwind and confront her fears. Once she could make sense of her thoughts, she knew the next step was to share her story. “Most people respond very well, but sometimes it makes people really uncomfortable,” she says. “Maybe they’ve gone through something similar, and just aren’t ready to confront that yet, and so it makes them uncomfortable,” she says, showing astounding empathy.

It has been four years since Aditi Gangrade, 27, first discovered her autism and ADHD. The journey has been a hard one, especially during the festive season, when she often felt over-stimulated. “Whenever we had to go for Garba during Navratri, or family functions, I would take two to three days just to recover,” she says. Gangrade would experience something akin to rage during these days and would often experience breakdowns. “If I’d known earlier, I would have made accommodations, like I do now,” she adds.

While we are seeing a lot more awareness about early detection of autism now, a 2022 study from the US National Library of Science found that 80 per cent of autistic females go undiagnosed until the age of 18. As far as what Gangrade feels about the inequality in treatment compared to a man with a similar diagnosis as hers,? she says, “Men are given grace. I have a guy friend who is autistic. He usually gets uncomfortable/anxious when guests come over unannounced to his place and he goes into his room when this happens. But if someone comes to my place, I am conditioned to entertain them, to put my needs second.”

Although her mental health journey started late, Gangrade channelled it into Much Much Media, a content studio that tells stories about meaningful change. But even in a professional setting, she is expected to shut off her neurodivergence. When she wears her sensory aids like noise cancelling headphones in business settings, “they say it’s not very ‘ladylike’,” implying that her gender performance supersedes her neurodivergence.

Despite being an advocate for those like her, when Gangrade attends panels or gatherings with friends, she often asks for a quiet corner or breaks in the middle to decompress from the chaos. But even such an ask is almost radical for a woman, when the assumed expectation for her is to “adjust”. “When I was younger people didn’t even know that girls and women could have autism,” she says. Once she got the diagnosis, “I understood myself so much better — my sensitivity, my strong sense of justice. Even just knowing that noisy environments bother me. I went through all that agony not knowing what was happening,” she says.

For many women, seeking therapy might not bring relief. Lakshita Shivhare, 21, has suffered from insomnia and anxiety all her life. After trying almost every fix, Shivhare turned to therapy. “I felt this pressure to compress 20 years of my life into 40 minutes. I kept thinking she [the therapist] misunderstood me, or that she was getting presumptuous,” she says. The pressure a woman feels to perform never ends, even in a judgement-free zone like therapy.

Shivhare has found that the fix to this is consulting her close friends. “I feel like they already know me, they have the context. I don’t have to explain myself,” she adds. Shivhare also uses focus fixations such as bedazzling to keep her mind from going into overdrive. We hope that the stories of these women reach every five-year-old holding on to a tube of toothpaste — scared and confused.

‘Women are also conditioned to mask life-long’
Deeksha Athwani, Clinical Psychologist at Fortis Hospital, Mulund; Hiranandani Hospital, Vashi; and SL Raheja Hospital, Mahim

Deeksha Athwani

“Mental illnesses like premenstrual dysphoric disorder, post-partum depression, even post-partum psychosis — which gets overlooked a lot — are unique to women, especially with how hormonal changes impact mental health. Other than that, even regular illnesses like depression may show up differently in women. They will show more internalised  symptoms like guilt and sadness, whereas men will be more angry or aggressive, more outward symptoms.”

‘Women are called hysterical’
Garima Pal,  Assistant Professor at Maharashtra National Law University

Garima Pal

“Women’s health often gets ignored as they are expected to manage everything — work, home, family. This leads to higher rates of depression, anxiety, hormonal issues, PTSD, and eating disorders, which are taboo and rarely acknowledged. Anxiety, panic attacks, and disordered eating, are all disorders more skewed towards women. Often they’re dismissed by family as “manageable”. Women’s struggles are trivialised — breakdowns termed ‘hysteria’, while men’s are taken seriously.”

80
Percentage of autistic women who go undiagnosed as of age 18
*US National Library of Science

2x
Likelihood of women to experience depression as compared to men
*Mayo Clinic

7 to 5 
Median age at which men are diagnosed with autism
*EpicResearch

1 in 5 
Proportion of women with depression or anxiety who are initially misdiagnosed

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