PESHAWAR: The health department has called upon Pakistan Psychiatric Society to chalk out a plan for launching advocacy and counselling programme in educational institutions to deal with the prevalent issues of depression, tensions, use of drugs and child abuse in the province.

“The government is trying its level best to address the problems of child abuse and change behaviours of teachers and students. Therefore, the experts should send us recommendations so that the government implements them for much-needed reforms in schools,” Dr Maqsood Ali, CEO Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Care Commission, told a seminar here the other day.

The one-day event was organised by provincial chapter of Pakistan Psychiatric Society (PPS) in collaboration with Iftikhar Psychiatric Hospital to mark the World Mental Health Day.

Dr Maqsood asked the experts to join hands and develop minimum standards of mental health for approval and implementation by the government. He said that standards for mental health services across the province were needed to deal with the growing public health problem.

“Our teachers and parents are prime subjects that affect long lasting behaviours but we need recommendations and subsequent legislation to bring perpetrators to justice. The government wants to take strict action against those misbehaving or abusing children,” he said.

Psychiatrist Mian Iftikhar Husain expressed concerns over increasing level of mental illnesses among the people, especially youth and residents of terrorism-hit areas of the country. He said that more experts were needed to provide the desired services to needy people.

“We can deal with rising trend of drugs in educational institutions and among general population by engaging experts to ascertain the scale of the real issues faced by the students and the people,” he said. He added that unemployment was one of the reasons of drug abuse.

“Government should make arrangements for free psychiatrists camps for which the PPS will offer services. There should be continuous intervention in the areas which have witnessed severe type of extremism,” he said.

Citing few studies conducted at Iftikhar Psychiatric Hospital, he said that they had found that 73 per cent of internally displaced women from Waziristan were vulnerable to psychological conditions because they had lost their near and dear ones in the era of militancy.

Prof Javid Akhtar, who was chief guest on the occasion, said that around 50 per cent people of the erstwhile Fata suffered psychological problems due to militancy.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2020