15 million people suffer from mental diseases in Pakistan

About 15 million people suffer from different mental problems in Pakistan, experts have said in a seminar.


The seminar was held on Tuesday as the country observed the World Mental Health Day.

Badaruddin Junejo, head of Psychiatry in Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, said that the number of such patients is constantly rising in the country.

Factors like economic loss, insecurity, political uncertainty, unemployment, stressful working conditions, gender discrimination and disruption of the social settings are main reasons of the mental diseases in the country, said the experts.

In connection with the day, a separated seminar was held in Benazir Bhutto Hospital in Rawalpindi where it was informed that depression accounts for 6 percent of all mental illnesses in the country.

Apart from this, Punjab Institute of Mental Health organized an awareness walk in the provincial capital of Lahore in Punjab Province to mark the day.

As the country marked the mental health day, a panic created by an unknown knife attacker, who has been declared psychopath by police, in the country's southern port city of Karachi still widely spread in the city.

Only females were targeted and 11 women have been wounded over the last two weeks by the mentally ill attacker who is at large after raising the wave of panic.
   [globaltimes.cn/Xinhua]
 11/10/17