Depression, anxiety and personality disorders are words we may know about but do little towards
KARACHI: The news of a man shooting his five family members dead and then committing suicide is one of the many news stories that are published in our national dailies and then as the day goes by, soon forgotten. We as a nation are busy talking about politics, circular debt and perhaps the US all the time that we forget the struggles of our own people.
It is time that we stopped sweeping mental health issues under the carpet. This is not to say that politicians and policymakers have not voiced their concerns over the growing issues of mental health and the importance of treating it but all those talks seem like lip service as the state fails in taking actions to tackle the issue.
Perhaps on a daily basis we hear of news about someone’s attempted suicide or that of parents killing their children as they are unable to feed them. We also witness men who seem disturbed walking the streets of our cities. In any of these cases, we don’t seem to talk about the underlining issue of these cases — mental ailments.
Depression, anxiety and personality disorders have all just stayed as mere words that we may know about but do little towards. It’s time for this to change. We need to actively advocate the importance of one’s mental health and make people aware of the many mental illnesses that may affect them. Just like any other physical ailments, mental illnesses also need to be treated in time before someone is pushed to the brink of taking one’s own life.
Wajiha Abbas
Published in The Express Tribune, December 28th, 2018.
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