Paint, poetry, peace

Mental health in Pakistan is facing a growing crisis. As someone who has spent the past five years working at the intersection of creativity, healing, and community engagement, I witness this reality unfold daily – not just in the statistics, but in the human stories behind them.

One in four people in Pakistan will experience a mental health challenge in their lifetime, and yet fewer than 900 psychiatrists serve a population of over 240 million. These figures alone highlight a systemic shortfall in mental health care. But beyond the shortage of clinical resources, there is something equally pressing: the urgent need for approaches that are culturally rooted, accessible and emotionally resonant for the people they aim to serve.

While mental health has gained more visibility in public discourse and national policies in recent years, the dominant model of care still leans heavily on clinical interventions – psychotherapy, psychiatry and pharmacological treatments. These services, although critical, are not enough. They are often inaccessible to the majority of Pakistanis due to cost, geography and cultural hesitation. In this context, we must look beyond traditional models and explore how culturally rooted, contextually relevant approaches – especially arts-based and community-led interventions – can bridge the gap and make mental well-being a reality for more people.

Arts-based methodologies are emerging globally as powerful complements to mental healthcare. These approaches do not seek to replace clinical treatment; rather, they offer additional pathways for individuals and communities to process emotion, develop resilience, and access support in ways that feel safe, familiar, and empowering. Creative practices – such as storytelling, visual arts, movement, music and theatre – can provide non-verbal avenues to express complex emotions, particularly in cultures where discussing mental health openly is still a taboo.

I have lived through different formats of loss and mental health challenges and explored how the arts can help understand emotion within community settings. Over time, the impact and importance of creative practices for healing and wellness have become more evidence-driven, when applied in a community setting.

What makes these interventions effective isn’t just the art but their deep connection to the local context. Rather than importing Western therapeutic models and retrofitting them to rural Pakistan, the approach centres on listening, adapting and co-creating with communities. It draws on Pakistan’s rich traditions of oral storytelling, devotional poetry like that of Bhit Shah and Rumi, indigenous crafts, and communal gatherings. These cultural expressions serve as psychosocial tools, offering familiar and safe ways for people to make meaning, reduce stigma and access support.

Arts-based practices do not require diagnostic labels, high literacy, or clinical spaces. They can be implemented in classrooms, camps, or under a tree in a village square. They invite everyone in–regardless of age, gender, or background. They are also scalable, cost-effective, and adaptable across humanitarian, educational, and health sectors. In a country where formal mental health infrastructure remains concentrated in urban centers, this matters immensely.

Pakistan’s evolving mental health frameworks have begun to acknowledge the importance of community care, prevention, and well-being. This is encouraging. But policy alone is not enough. We need investment in capacity building, training facilitators in trauma-informed creative practices. We need local research that documents and validates the impact of these practices. And we need partnerships across sectors – education, healthcare, humanitarian aid – to embed these methodologies where they are most needed.

I’ve seen how creative practice can open doors that therapy alone cannot. I’ve watched a teenage boy in Lyari paint his unspoken rage into something beautiful. I’ve listened to a grandmother in Gilgit sing lullabies that carried generations of loss and strength. I’ve sat with communities as they transformed pain into poetry, displacement into tapestry, and silence into collective songs. This teaches us how art can create safe spaces to celebrate beauty – even if beauty isn’t beautiful.

Healing, after all, is not just about diagnosis and treatment; it’s about recognition, relationship and meaning-making. We began – long ago – with clay, with song, with shared stories. In reclaiming these creative roots, we reclaim a more holistic path to healing.

The writer is a Karachi based multimedia artist, architect and organisational lead at the Center for Arts Based Methodologies (CFAW).