Autori: Yami, Nabam, Satchit Prasun, Mandal
Titolo: Exploring women’s mental health in Nyishi polygynous households: The indirect effects of marital satisfaction and self-esteem
Periodico: Psicologia sociale
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 233 - Pagina finale: 256

Polygamy is a culturally approved practice in many South Asian tribal communities. The Nyishi tribal community of Arunachal Pradesh endorses male polygamous marriage (known as polygyny) due to its sociocultural and agricultural benefits. Despite its many sociocultural justifications, polygamy as a marital practice is detrimental to women’s mental health. This study investigated the impact of polygyny on the marital satisfaction and psychological distress of Nyishi women living across rural and urban settlements. We assumed that poor marital satisfaction and low self-esteem would mediate the relationship between polygyny and psychological distress. We used purposive sampling to recruit 254 Nyishi women (124 and 130 from polygynous and monogamous marriages, respectively), who responded to the self-report measures of the constructs. Two-way MANOVAs and ANOVA revealed that Nyishi women in polygynous households experience frequent somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depression, hostility, and paranoid ideation, along with global psychological distress, as well as lesser marital satisfaction. This adverse impact of polygyny is even more pronounced on rural Nyishi women compared to their urban counterparts. The Nyishi women in rural-polygynous households are most vulnerable to psychological symptoms, followed by urban-polygynous, rural-monogamous, and urban-monogamous women. Path analyses with the percentile bootstrap method revealed that poor marital satisfaction and low self-esteem significantly mediated the relationship between polygyny and psychological distress. The findings underscore the plight of Nyishi women who are forced into polygyny, especially in rural areas.




SICI: 1827-2517(2025)2<233:EWMHIN>2.0.ZU;2-V
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1482/117299
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1482/117299

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