Female Migrants and their Health in India: A Study of Kerala Women Working in Mumbai

In this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the general, reproductive, and mental health status of migrant women from Kerala who stay in the working women’s hostels. The present study is based on the primary data collected from working women in Mumbai who stay in hostels. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. In order to understand the mental health status of the migrant women a General Health Questionnaire, which is widely used to assess the presence and severity of psychiatric symptoms was used. The General Health Questionnaire is used to assess the presence and severity of the psychiatric symptoms. It incorporates the four subscales of somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression. This scale consists of 28 items, each with four responses, graded using a scale 0,1,2,3. The scores for each subscale namely somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression were calculated. Using these subscales, mental health score was computed. The scores for mental health vary from a minimum value of 1 to a maximum value of 37. As the scores increases the mental health status decreases. The score was categorized into poor, average and good. A lower score indicates less number of psychological problems and higher score indicates more number of psychological problems.