One in Three Adults in Pakistan Has a Mental Disorder, First National Survey Finds

Nearly one in three adults in Pakistan is currently living with a diagnosable mental or behavioural disorder, according to findings from the country's first nationally representative psychiatric survey, reported by Dawn.

The survey was carried out by the Pakistan Psychiatric Society in collaboration with Hamdard University in Karachi, Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the UK, the University of South Florida in the US, and psychiatric institutions across Pakistan. Researchers interviewed nearly 18,000 adults in all four provinces between 2018 and 2022, using internationally standardised diagnostic tools, with the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics identifying the survey areas and sample.

The numbers behind the headline figure

The survey put the current prevalence of any psychiatric disorder at 32 percent and the lifetime prevalence at 38 percent. One in five adults met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, and more than one in ten had depression. Six percent of respondents reported suicidal thoughts in the month before they were interviewed. Prof Raza-ur-Rahman of Hamdard University, the study's lead investigator, led the analysis alongside Prof Anjum Memon, Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who is a senior co-author. Prof Wajid Akhundzada, president of the Pakistan Psychiatric Society, was also involved in the project.

Rates were higher among older adults, people with lower education and income, the unemployed, and those who were widowed, divorced or separated — a distribution that tracks with patterns documented in other countries, though the scale of Pakistan's data set, drawn from all four provinces rather than a single city or clinic sample, is what researchers are calling the most reliable national estimate to date.

A system built for a fraction of the need

The survey's findings arrive against a backdrop the government itself has already quantified. The World Health Organization estimates that 32.4 million people in Pakistan need mental healthcare, while only about 5 percent of the population can access services, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan's report on the launch of a new national policy. Pakistan has roughly 0.19 psychiatrists for every 100,000 people, compared with an average of seven per 100,000 across high-income countries.

A new national policy, days before the survey's findings landed

The findings follow closely on the government's launch of the National Mental Health Policy 2026-2035, unveiled October 1 at the Pakistan Global Mental Health Summit in Islamabad. Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal called mental health "an emergency" and tied it directly to the economy, while Minister of State for Health Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad Bharath said the policy reflects "a shared commitment to bringing mental healthcare closer to families." WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the summit that mental health spending returns about four dollars for every dollar invested in treating conditions like depression and anxiety, and UNICEF's Pakistan representative, Pernille Ironside, pressed for more focus on prevention and access for children and adolescents.

The policy, developed with WHO, UNICEF and the Global Institute of Human Development at Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, sets out primary and community-based care, prevention and early identification, workforce training, youth-focused support and climate-related mental health response as its main pillars, while leaving implementation to the provinces.

Smaller steps already under way

Separately, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council has ordered annual mental health screening for medical and dental students, faculty and staff, a narrower measure announced earlier this month that reflects the same concern now showing up at national scale in the survey data. Both moves point to a system starting from a low base: a 95 percent treatment gap that a new policy framework alone will not close without the workforce and funding to back it.

What to watch

The policy sets a ten-year horizon, but it does not yet carry a published budget or provincial implementation timeline. Whether provinces move to expand community-based services, and whether the workforce shortfall narrows from its current 0.19 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, will be the measures that show whether this month's announcements translate into care reaching the roughly 95 percent of people in need who currently go without it.

Build Better Pakistan's Health Desk is tracking the rollout of Pakistan's National Mental Health Policy and will follow up as provinces detail implementation plans.