Taskeen Health Initiative

The vision of the Elevate Prize greatly resonates with me and if I have the honor of being chosen for it, it can help me achieve my vision of easing the suffering of all life forms in the sphere of my influence. I feel that currently I do not have the intellectual and financial resources to realize my vision and that is what I hope that The Elevate Prize can help me with. The financial aspect of the prize can help relieve some pressure of fundraising and enable me to focus on program development and implementation. Access to world renowned scholars, mentors and institutions can help me develop technical skills, particularly with regards to mass communication, technology, and impact evaluation that can help me improve my organization’s programs. Learning best practices regarding organizational management can help me develop an efficient structure that can help my organization navigate through the operational challenges we are experiencing. If I am selected, then I am looking forward to learning from my peers about similar socio-cultural challenges they face in their work and the strategies that can be used to mitigate them, while also sharing the wisdom that I have gained in my journey. 

In early 2012, I was admitted to the psychiatry ward of my medical college after having struggled for years with psychological problems which culminated in an overdose on prescription medications. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and started on treatment.

In 2013, while in medical school, I was responding to a bomb blast in a neighborhood in my city. At a medical camp 3 weeks after the blast, I met a 7-year-old girl who had not spoken since the blast despite having no physical injury. Further inquiry revealed that she had stopped speaking after identifying her father’s remains through a ring on a charred finger. It was evident that it was a psychological problem, but the family refused to seek mental health support due to stigma against help seeking.  

These experiences fueled a fire within me to take action to address the social injustices that people with psychological problems experience. In January 2015, after graduating from medical college, I decided to launch Taskeen (Urdu: to comfort).  I hope that through my efforts, those who are suffering will not have to experience the challenges I experienced and are able to avail the opportunities that helped me get better.

Depression has been estimated to be the leading cause of disability globally. In Pakistan, estimates before the COVID crisis indicated that 25% of the population was affected; approximately 50 million people. A recent study that we conducted during the COVID crisis revealed that 60% of respondents reported experiencing psychological distress, meaning now potentially 120 million people may be at risk. However, lack of mental health awareness, stigma against help seeking and lack of access to professional help prevent most sufferers from getting the help that they need. All of this results in tremendous suffering for people affected by mental health problems, and their families.

Taskeen’s vision is a Pakistan in which everyone can manage their distress effectively, and those affected by mental illness can get the help that they need. Our goals are to:

• Raise awareness about holistic wellbeing and educate people about causes, signs, and symptoms of mental illness through public mental health information campaigns on social and mass media.
• Encourage healthy expression by providing free of cost mental health support through a mental health helpline.
• Advocate for increased investment in mental health and relevant policy change through a national mental health advocacy campaign. 

Most approaches towards mental health focus on the manifestations of the problems and not on root causes. Our model of holistic wellbeing seeks not just to identify and treat illness, but to promote wellbeing by bringing about behaviour change to address the root causes of suffering in our society. By focusing on upstream causes our innovative approach has helped us achieve a greater impact.

Most mental health organizations only work on treatment since these can be monetized as compared to prevention programs. We are the only organization working on mental health promotion and mental illness prevention in Pakistan. By doing this, we are filling an important gap in the mental health landscape and pioneering mental health promotion methodologies that are being picked up and used by other mental health organizations.

While some aspects of the human experience are universal, others are more culturally determined such as mental illness. Understanding indigenous conceptualizations of mental health is therefore essential to develop culturally relevant programs. We conducted anthropological research through which we were able to understand ethno-psychological constructs which are novel to our cultural contexts. Using these learnings have been able to develop programs that have been more impactful.

Mental health is a multifaceted issue that needs to be addressed holistically and we believe that our approach of wellbeing promotion and mental illness prevention can serve as a model that can be adopted in other low to middle income countries. 

Our public awareness campaigns are increasing awareness about mental health, reducing the stigma against mental illness, and encouraging those who are suffering to seek mental health support before their condition worsens. Through our efforts we have reached more than 30 million people over a span of 2 years.

Most mental health services in Pakistan are in major urban centers with sufferers from thousands of small towns and villages being forced to travel to major cities for mental health support. Our free of cost mental health helpline allows marginalized populations to access mental health services that they could never have hoped to access in their areas.

Our advocacy efforts are poised to have a significant institutional impact by mobilizing national and international partners to lobby our governments to increase investment and enact relevant policy change in mental health. We have established the Pakistan Mental Health Coalition and South Asian Union for Mental Health to achieve this end.