Counselling in Pakistan

Counselling in simple words is seeking help from an expert to learn mechanisms to solve everyday problems. Problems which are complex and need extra care while dealing with them. Despite chit chatting about every other thing in the world we as a nation just don’t want to indulge in topics related to mental health. Mental health is as important as our physical health yet we are not willing to accept this reality. Majority of our population still associates counselling with chronic mental illnesses such as madness. Their famous excuse to shun it is:

“We aren’t mad (pagal) that we should seek therapy or counselling”.

Mental health includes emotional, social and psychological well-being. The stigma attached to mental illnesses have gained momentum over the last few years as more and more cases have been reported. As per the Pakistan Psychiatric Society’s report 1 in every 10 Pakistani suffers from a major mental illness. Whereas another 20–30% who seek medical help for physical pains are actually suffering from psychosomatic manifestations such as stress, anxiety and physical fatigue of mental illnesses.

Another dilemma of our society is that mental illness is regarded as a privileged class disorder, since they started talking about it first and have had signs more apparent than in other classes. We as a society tend to use “Scapegoating” which is an example of displaced aggression. We put blame of our problems on others mostly innocents or ones who have less authority in decision making. Examples are prejudices against minorities, boss blaming the subordinate for a failed project or a husband abusing his wife because he is going through a rough patch in life.

Counselling is important however due to our negligence we have totally ignored it because most of our population don’t even understand what counselling means. Counselling helps in strengthening oneself, brings in a pause, lets a person think and be mindful of his/her response to any situation. It does not offer a quick and easy fix, neither does it provide a guidelines to solve all problems but it facilitates in identifying them and bridging the person to discover his/her own mannerism or strategies to solve or deal with them.

A Counsellor mediates the problem solving process by guiding its clients to discover hidden patterns and eventually solutions to their problems. The main focus of a Counsellor is not to solve the problem rather it is to strengthened the client’s internal and external resources, so that he/she able to cope with problems and be able to solve them as well on his/her own, eventually.

One of the important factors to understand is that each individual behaves and reacts in a different way even to similar situations hence it is very difficult to find a consolidated response to reactions. They vary from person to person: their upbringing, mindfulness and consequences make them react in a certain way which cannot be predicted or predefined. The unprecedented growth in number of cases for depression, suicides, panic and anxiety attacks bear testimony to the fact that most of our population is suffering from active aggression. They take out this aggressive by either harming oneself or others, which is also a reflection how we are as a society repress our psychological destabilization.

Counselling is not the solution, but a means to reach to a solution. Therefore reach out, seek help and listen to others when they complain about their mental health. Because your ignorance might take their life.

References:

• Causes of Mental Illnesses: https://bit.ly/2pn64cf
• Importance of Counselling: https://bit.ly/35xZlNb