The mental health of civilians in Kashmir is in a dire state owing to the high levels of conflict persistent in the region since 1989 with India and Pakistan being involved in 3 wars since 1989 not to mention the frequent incidences of shelling, stone pelting and other forms of violence and conflict in the region.
According to a survey done by Medicines Sans Frontieres, at the time of the interview, almost half of the respondents reported feeling occasionally or never safe with 73.3 percent of the respondents reporting that they have witnessed physical and psychological mistreatments and 44.1 percent reporting that they have experienced such incidents themselves. The survey further affirms that violence and threat of violence seems to have a significant effect on mental health with one in ten people reporting that mental health concerns were their primary health concerns during the one-month time period taken for the survey. Furthermore, 62.7 percent of the respondents suffered from heightened anxiety such as nervousness, tension or excessive worrying and 33.9 percent of people reported that they had suicidal thoughts during the time period. These mental health concerns have further manifested as physical health concerns such as headaches, body pains and abdominal complaints which seem to have been caused by stress. Overall, studies have found that just under half of the population, approximately 45 percent of the population, suffer from some form of mental health illness.
Children are a section of the population that seem to be especially impacted by conflict in terms of mental health, which creates a trans generational transmission of mental health issues. The conflict in the region disturbs education and their social lives, hindering psycho-social development and instigating mental health problems in the children. With children, mental health is majorly affected by fear which is observed in 24.6 percent of children in the Kashmir region, the culprit of the problem majorly being conflict observed by the children in their daily lives.
Therefore, it is of urgent importance for the government to act resolutely to improve mental health in the region through a reduction in conflict and improved mental health services for the population. The government may avail peacekeeping methods and resolution for a reduction in conflict in the region, however, despite the reduction in conflict the region may sustain declining mental health which must be combated through allocation of adequate resources towards mental health services permitting an increase in the number of child psychiatry centers, the number of psychiatrists in the region, the proximity of a psychiatrist as well as destigmatizing mental health illnesses in the valley.
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