The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council’s directive ordering medical institutions to screen students’ mental health arrives late to a crisis that has been building in plain sight. The memo requires campuses to conduct structured screenings at admission and annually, refer cases to psychiatry departments, and treat psychological distress as an institutional responsibility. It follows a run of deaths that no longer feels incidental. A student at Muhammad Medical College in Mirpurkhas took her life this month. In February, another had died after jumping from a medical university hostel in Lahore. Weeks earlier, two students at a private university in the same city fell to their deaths from campus buildings. These tragedies, the council warns, are only the visible tip of a wider problem of “growing concerns” over suicide and psychological distress.
Roughly one in five students is said to have suicidal thoughts, and four to five per cent attempt suicide at least once. More than a third live with mild depression and 13 per cent with severe forms. Pakistan’s own trajectory is moving in the wrong direction. The suicide rate has climbed from 7.3 per 100,000 people in 2019 to 9.8 in 2022. These numbers are almost certainly understated in a country where stigma keeps families silent, reporting mechanisms remain weak, and fewer than 0.2 psychiatrists exist for every 100,000 people.
This crisis is not confined to campuses; it is spreading quietly across districts that rarely make headlines. Chitral alone lost 83 people to suicide between 2015 and 2019, and another 63 died in the last five years, with women disproportionately affected. Little research has explored why this mountainous district has become a suicide hotspot.
Globally, a person dies by suicide every 40 seconds. The burden falls heaviest on young people in low- and middle-income countries. Pakistan sits squarely in that category, with a population where more than half are under 25.
The screening order is a start, but it confines itself to medical and dental colleges. Meanwhile, the broader university system continues to operate without a consistent mental health infrastructure. The Higher Education Commission has issued guidelines for years, yet implementation remains sporadic.
Proactive screening must be accompanied by fully funded counselling centres, national helplines and on?campus crisis plans. Faculty should be trained to identify distress before it turns fatal. And the law still casts a shadow. Attempted suicide was only recently decriminalised in parts of the country, and the residue of that legal history continues to deter families from seeking help.
The problem runs deeper than institutions. Students carry economic anxiety, social pressure, and a rigid culture that reduces worth to grades and obedience. Without addressing this suffocating ecosystem, any directive amounts to paper promises. *