Psychosocial Stress Associated with Sanitation Practices: Experiences of Women in a Rural Community in India

This paper by Hirve et al. (2015), published in the Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, features the results of a mixed methods study that examined the sources of sanitation-related psychosocial stress experienced by women and adolescent girls in Pune, India. It finds that fear, lack of cleanliness, indignity, shame and embarrassment due to a lack of privacy were significant sources of open defecation-related stress. Women practicing open defecation were also found to feel stressed and harassed by community leaders trying to enforce open defecation-free policies.