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Residents of eight different locations in Kathmandu, four in the inner city and four on the outskirts, were interviewed about environmental stressors, mental distress, and physical symptoms. There were significant gender and location differences on all three measures. Compared to men, women reported more mental distress and more physical symptoms, but fewer environmental stressors. Compared to residents of the inner city, residents of the outskirts reported more mental distress, more physical symptoms, and fewer environmental stressors. Environmental stressors were linked to mental distress among residents in the outskirts but were not linked to mental distress among residents in the inner city. Results suggested that residents’ belief in perceived control of their lives by God partially explained this effect.

Deteriorating environmental quality is the source of a variety of grave problems facing urban residents. This article reports slum residents' perceptions and responses to air and water pollution, noise, garbage, crowding, and traffic. The respondents were 280 male and female slum dwellers in Old Delhi, New Delhi, and Allahabad in India. Results showed that slum dwellers of Delhi reported greater stress compared to the respondents of Allahabad, and they further reported greater helplessness and acceptance in coping with the environmental stressors. The results also showed gender differences in the perception of some of the environmental stressors.

Economic and environmental problems are acute stressors for the lower socio-economic class residing in the urban Indian slums. This article endeavours to explore the way in which slum dwellers subjectively perceive these stressors daily confronted by them. Data was collected on 280 slum respondents of Delhi and Allahabad Results showed that at the perceptual level both the economic and environmental stressors were not correlated Further, results indicated that respondents reported acute poverty but they failed to perceive the deteriorating environmental conditions.