Exploring The Mental Health Experiences Of Girls In Pakistan: Gender Intersectionality, Societal Expectations, And Vulnerability
Creators: name: Shah, Hafzah
Publisher: name: University of Leicester
Year: 2025

description: Recently, there is increased global interest in child and adolescent mental health due to links between positive mental health and positive long-term outcomes. There are concerns about the growing prevalence rates of mental health needs globally. This is especially the case in majority world countries (MWCs), where there are limited resources to meet the demand. Most common risk factors include poverty, internal migration, urbanisation, and lifestyles changes which are notable moderators of children’s mental health conditions in many MWCs. One majority world country is Pakistan where the prevalence of mental health disorders amongst children and young people is increasing. However, Pakistani society lacks understanding, education and resources to tackle these detrimental issues. In some MWCs, particularly in Pakistan, there is an intersection between gender and mental health, with girls more likely to experience emotional disorders. Women in limited resource countries like Pakistan experience gender-specific issues on a systematically larger scale in comparison to women in minority world countries. These gender-based problems are particularly significant due to various capacities within an ecological framework that highlights a number of individual, structural and cultural level factors that add to gender discrimination and violence. Problematically, the challenges are further exacerbated by certain vulnerabilities such as being a child in care. This results in a more complex and a variety of intersecting factors. Therefore, a holistic and a feminist informed approach due to the gender focus is required to address the issues of girls’ mental health need, trauma, and gender-centred struggles in Pakistan.To understand this, the current study aimed to explore what it means to identify as a young female within the cultural norms of Pakistan, and specifically what the “lived experiences” of vulnerable females who reside in carehome settings are in relation to their mental health. For this, the perspectives of these girls, their carers, and teachers are evaluated to understand existing issues and recommendations for potential psychosocial support they may require in the future. Data were collected through focus groups (with some individual interviews). In total, 13 focus groups were conducted: eight with young people aged 14-18 years (n=80), one with caregivers (n=5), two with parents (n=10) and two with teachers (n=7). Two caregivers from the girls carehome were individually interviewed for practical reasons. As a result, two central messages were identified. These are Systemic Issues and Child-Centred/Interpersonal level Issues. Overall, from investigating the data, four main themes and nine respective sub-themes were generated in relation to these two broader issues. These results are significant in eliminating the existing gap in literature which mainly focuses on either the feministic approach or the risk factors involved in child-specific mental health studies. Thus, innovative findings that amalgamates both these important factors and their impact on the “lived experiences” of the girls residing in residential care. Additionally, the reported findings will play a crucial role in guiding any solution-focused policies, interventions, awareness programs or newly generated data amongst school/carehome population that is informed by the voices of those girls with lived experiences of gender-based challenges and mental health need.