Healthcare in Pakistan
Depression often starts at young age and affects women more commonly than men. One or two mothers out of 10 have depression after childbirth. Depression also limits a mother’s capacity to care for her child, and can seriously affect the child’s growth and development. A study showed that exposure to maternal mental distress is associated with undernutrition in 9‐month infants in urban Pakistan.
Reception of Unaccompanied Minors from the Northern Triangle
Many unaccompanied migrant children endure traumatic events and violence in their home countries. The effects of those experiences take a toll on their mental health, shown in the higher rates of mental illnesses among refugee children. The anxiety and grief accumulated through those experiences, added with language barriers and difficulty in adapting to the new culture or environment, can make a child vulnerable and contribute to a poor mental state, causing a higher susceptibility to illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Drawn from a sample in a research study, the rates of PTSD among unaccompanied migrant minors from the Northern Triangle is 11.8%. Anxiety affected 54.4% of the children and 38.8% of the children showed symptoms of depression.