What is your experience with/ views on mental issues(read: power issues) in Pakistani community?
I feel that wherever I see there are so many depressed people. So many who are suffering from traumatic life situations such as forced marriages, abusive relations, too much control from parents or in-laws.
Is it really so that Pakistani culture is about dominating over the children and parents need to decide on their children’s big decisions i.e. education, marriage, life after marriage etc. I feel it is such an abnormal approach to life.
I myself am suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress syndrome after a long period of pressure and too much control from my own parents before I got married. I have been married almost 10 years now but I still feel that the consequences from the life before I got married are chasing me and affecting my health. It makes me feel that I am not normal. But when I look around me it seems as if there are so many who suffer from this. What is normal than?
Is it so that living with a multicultural identity can create these syndroms? Is it so that Pakistani elders living in the West have been too strict with carrying on the old fashioned way that they forgot to take care of their childrens’ feelings when enforcing their decisions on marriage upon them?
There are so many cases of people around 40 who are getting breakdowns due to the consequences of forced marriages in their 20ies. I myself was forced married at the age of 20 to a cousin back in Pakistan but was lucky to get out of it and got married to an educated man afterwards. However I am still haunted by the effects of that forced marriage to this day.
Any thoughts?