Unofficial figures point to a mental health crisis amid severe restrictions on Afghan women’s lives

First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away.

“I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.”

    • liv@beehaw.orgEnglish
      25·
      1 year ago

      I found another article that gives a few numbers.

      One mental health worker in the western province of Herat who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said the Taliban had barred health professionals from publishing or sharing statistics on suicide, which had previously been published regularly.

      Herat had the most reported suicide attempts of the provinces for which data was obtained: 123, including 106 by women. There were 18 reported deaths, 15 of them women

    • ginerel@kbin.social
      24·
      1 year ago

      two thirds are still two thirds - whether that’s 3 people out of 4 or 750.000 out of 1.000.000. And given that

      A survey published in the journal BMC Psychiatry two months before the Taliban takeover found nearly half the population suffered from psychological distress.

      I think the numbers are really worrying.

    • Falcuz@lemm.ee
      13·
      1 year ago

      I agree that absolute numbers would be very helpful, but stating and sharing trends can definitely be helpful. Not being able to verify them is a problem though.

      Taliban authorities have not published data on suicides and have barred health workers from sharing up-to-date statistics in multiple provinces, medics say. Health workers agreed to privately share figures for the year from August 2021 to August 2022 to highlight an urgent public health crisis. The data suggests Afghanistan has become one of very few countries worldwide where more women than men die by suicide.