A mental health policy must reach the exam hall

Summary

• The World Health Organization estimates that 32.4 million Pakistanis need mental healthcare, yet only about five per cent can reach it.
• World Mental Health Day asked governments to listen to lived experience.
• A mental health policy that cannot be heard there has not really been heard at all.

AI Generated Summary

By Ahsan Ilyas Butt

On 1 October, Pakistan launched a new National Mental Health Policy (2026–2035). Nine days later, World Mental Health Day took as its theme “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change”. Few groups in this country have more lived experience to share, or are asked less often, than the teenagers who sit our board exams.

The scale of the challenge was laid out at the Islamabad summit where the policy was unveiled. The World Health Organization estimates that 32.4 million Pakistanis need mental healthcare, yet only about five per cent can reach it. The country has roughly 0.19 psychiatrists per 100,000 people; high-income countries average around seven. A gap that wide cannot be closed by specialists alone, which is why the policy rightly looks to primary healthcare, communities and schools.

Schools are where this policy will be won or lost, and nothing in a school year is as loaded as exam season. For months, a teenager’s worth is quietly converted into a number. A single sitting can seem to decide which college, which stream, which future. Coaching centres sell first-attempt success. Relatives ask “Kitne numbers aaye?” (“How many marks did you get?”) before they ask how the child is. Then results arrive, publicly and instantly, often on a phone, sometimes before any adult has had a chance to be in the room.