One in Three Adults in Pakistan Lives With a Mental Disorder, the Country’s First National Survey of Nearly 18,000 People Finds

KARACHI: Mental health in Pakistan now has a number attached to it, and it is a stark one. The country’s first nationally representative mental health survey has found that nearly one in three adults is living with a diagnosable mental and behavioural disorder. Researchers from the Pakistan Psychiatric Society call it the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind ever done here, and its findings have been published in the British Medical Journal.

18,000 adults, five years of work

The survey ran from 2018 to 2022 and covered nearly 18,000 adults across all four provinces. It was led by Professor Raza-ur-Rahman of Hamdard University in Karachi, working with Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the UK, the University of South Florida in the US and psychiatric institutions across Pakistan. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics helped identify the survey areas and the sample, which is why the team describes the result as the first reliable national picture of the country’s mental health.

PTSD at the top of the list

Some 32 per cent of adults were living with a mental or behavioural disorder at the time of the survey, and 38 per cent had experienced one during their lifetime. One in five met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. More than one in ten had depression, and six per cent reported suicidal thoughts in the previous month. Rates ran higher among older adults, people with less education and lower incomes, the unemployed, and those widowed, divorced or separated — and the problems, the researchers found, cut deeply into family life, relationships and the ability to work.

Over to the policymakers

Lead investigator Prof Raza-ur-Rahman says the survey provides the evidence needed to build effective mental health policies and services: it identifies who is most at risk and where the unmet need for care is greatest. Prof Anjum Memon of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, the senior co-author, noted that policymakers have relied for decades on fragmented local studies or international estimates; now, for the first time, there is robust national evidence. The researchers recommend folding mental health into primary healthcare, expanding community-based support, training frontline health workers and sustained work to reduce stigma. Pakistan Psychiatric Society president Prof Wajid Akhundzada warned that specialist services are limited and trained professionals are in short supply, and said the findings would shape future policy, service planning and workforce training.