On December 2, 2014, Sajid Habib, a sub-inspector of police was reprimanded by his superior in front of his colleagues. He left the meeting room, put his service revolver to his head pulled the trigger. On May 16, 2016, Jahanzeb Khan Kakar, the Jafarabad district police officer (DPO), ended his life in a similar fashion. The national media reported that on May 23, 2017, that a 59-year-old peon of the Ministry of Interior committed suicide by jumping off the sixth floor of Pakistan Secretariat in Islamabad apparently in an attempt to get his unemployed son a job, which was not possible unless he died while in service.

In March 2018, pictures of Sohail Ahmad Tipu, the deputy commissioner of Gujranwala, sent shock waves across the rank and file of bureaucracy. Many officers were left shaken and blamed stress and depression, arising out of institutional failure, as the main reason for the suicide. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one of them said that many other officers were facing similarly stressful conditions at work. It was reported that Tipu was suffering from acute depression and was denied leave despite producing a medical certificate. Last year in January, SSP Abrar Nekokara, committed suicide, leaving a note, later found circulating on social media, saying that “a person commits suicide when he is fed up after realising the futility of existence”.

There are indeed many reported cases of state functionaries, including senior civil servants and law enforcement personnel buckling under pressure with little to no support. Every now and then, we learn about complaints and incidents of misuse of authority, loss of temper, ill-treatment, unbecoming behaviour, use of foul language, thrashing and manhandling of citizens at the hands of street-level officials including traffic wardens, security personnel, patwaris, municipal inspectors, police constables and tax collectors. Apart from issues pertaining to the modes of recruitment, trainings, capacity and accountability, there is a side of the problem that has never appeared on the policy agenda.

Can those who wield power and affect lives of ordinary citizens in a major way be left to continue dealing with people without being provided adequate mental health care?

According to Dr Ayesha Mian, chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at the Aga Khan University, around 50 million people in Pakistan are suffering from mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorders, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. Only a few hundred psychiatrists are available to cater for mental health of 220 million people in a few public-run facilities across the country. Meanwhile, our society hates to acknowledge the existence of mental health issues as a reality and its incidence is treated as a social stigma and taboo. This denial of the problem despite the increasing number of patients of depression, anxiety, mental and psychological disorders is evident. A lot of investment on human capital as a driving engine of future economic growth is being pumped in by the international donors in developing economies of Asia, including Pakistan. It is high time we prioritised mental health like physical health.

The emotional well-being and psychological stability of government functionaries is not only important for them and their families, friends, superiors, subordinates and associates but also for general public as their ‘clients’ in modern corporate terms. The suicides and lack of proper health support mentioned above should be a call to action. It is discouraging to note that apart from a lecture or two on stress management, no serious effort is made by the training academies to prepare entrants into the civil service for the mental, psychological, emotional, cultural, professional, and social challenges ahead. As they grow in seniority, they also grow in anxiety. Long working hours, separated families, low wages, inadequate recognition of their efforts, inter-institutional rifts and lowering esteem engender psychological issues and eventually trigger physical illnesses of telling effects. Even in the United Kingdom, the problem has received serious attention only recently when they had their first Civil Service Mental Health Conference with an aim “to breaking down the stigma and creating a truly inclusive environment”. They had already had a range of support available for human resource including 2,200 Mental Health First Aiders, and have launched a newly-compiled mental health guide for managers. The United Nations have stress counsellors to cater to psychological support needs, who sit to listen to their human resource, provide advice and appropriate treatment to save precious lives, bring happiness to their families, people around them and the public they serve. The federal and provincial governments who depend so much on bureaucratic machinery for implementation of their policies must attend to this malaise. A sizeable allocation of funds is needed for mental health and well-being of men and women in service of Pakistan.

The writer is a policy analyst and can be contacted at kanwaranwaarali@gmail.com