Mental Health Is Not Just Personal, It’s Geopolitical

In the contemporary era, mental illness is usually framed as an individual or familial matter. But this proposition denies a far profound reality: mental health is also influenced by politics, power, and state violence. Across Kashmir to Gaza, and from Russia to China, mental health is being impacted and at times directly assaulted by states and geopolitics. Mental illness doesn’t develop in isolation; it is usually the result of war, occupation, state oppression, or forced exile.

We begin with Kashmir, arguably one of the most militarized regions on earth. According to a 2020 report in ResearchGate, a study concluded that almost 45% of Kashmiri adults experience mental distress, which includes anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This isn’t solely due to individual problems. Individuals reside in constant fear of arrest, raids, torture, and lockdowns by the Indian state. Kashmiris have seen enforced disappearances, killings, and political crackdowns for years. The trauma of these atrocities has long afflicted their emotional and psychological health.

Anthropologist Saiba Varma, in her work The Occupied Clinic, illustrates how psychiatric services within Kashmir are frequently attached to military establishments. Clinics are sometimes situated within or in proximity to army areas. Patients, particularly young men, are afraid of being stigmatized as threats and not victims. Mental health care here doesn’t always provide protection it can resemble another element of the system of surveillance. This crossing of healing and control is representative of how mental health can be used by the powerful to manipulate.

This is far from the first time this has happened. In Russia, dozens of peaceful anti-war activists were coerced into psychiatric hospitals in 2025, according to a Reuters investigation. The state used amorphous mental health laws to shut up critics, a strategy reminiscent of Soviet political repression These individuals weren’t mentally ill. Their sole “crime” was protesting but by labeling them as unstable, the state took their credibility and liberty away simultaneously.

China also proved to be the same. In May 2025, The Guardian revealed that security forces were silencing dissidents with mental health laws. Opponents of the Chinese Communist Party were being incarcerated on the grounds of mental instability, without judicial trials or legal assistance. This strategy of employing psychiatry as a repressive weapon against activists is evidence of how care for mental health can become a weapon for oppression.

Worldwide, we are witnessing breakdowns of mental health in war-torn areas such as Gaza and Ukraine. In Gaza, a recent Time Magazine article chronicled increasing levels of trauma, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation among children because of bombings and food scarcity. Even the health workers are burnt out emotionally. Mental health care systems are strained or bombed into oblivion. In these areas, the breakdown in mental health is not an accident, it is war.

Mental health, therefore, needs to be understood as not only a medical problem, but also as a matter of human rights and geopolitics. It is conditioned by colonial heritage, authoritarianism, and uneven worldwide power relations. Disadvantaged communities, ethnic minorities, refugees, and occupied people are disproportionately affected. They are frequently disregarded because they are politically inconvenient.

This leads us to an important question: what can be done?

First, the global community needs to cease treating mental health as simply a “side issue” in war zones. Mental health care needs to be put at the forefront of humanitarian response, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction. The United Nations, World Health Organization, and NGOs need to invest in community-based mental health systems that are culturally safe and free of the military forces.

Second, international law should encompass psychological abuse such as the application of psychiatric detention as a tool for political opposition as a human rights abuse. Mental health laws repression should be condemned and sanctioned at the International Criminal Court or UN Human Rights Council.

Third, nations such as Pakistan can show the way by calling for mental health diplomacy. By bringing these points in platforms such as the OIC, SCO, and UN, Pakistan has the ability to break the silence of psychological repression in countries such as Kashmir and Palestine. Now is the time to look at mental well-being as an integral part of national security, rather than independent of it.

In short, mental health is no longer simply a matter of therapy, diagnosis, or medication. Mental health is freedom, justice, and dignity. If states deploy psychiatry as a weapon or neglect to shield vulnerable groups, then they are not merely destroying minds they are destroying peace. The moment has arrived to reimagine mental health as a geopolitical issue.