Impact of Poverty on Mental Health

Daily Times Pakistan
Oct 05, 2022

Impact of Poverty on Mental Health


Poverty can be felt from a single glance across every nook and cranny of Pakistani streets and roads. Scenes of children, who should have been enrolled in the schools, clad in rags forced to beg on the streets are obtrusive, to say the least. There are families of ten to fifteen members living in a single room, who neither have a concrete roof over their head nor access to basic amenities, such as clean drinking water, good sanitation, health and hygiene. The situation gets so bad at times that individuals are forced to be deprived of any let alone adequate and healthy food, thereby, leading to malnutrition.

It is disillusioning to note that there is an interconnection of poverty with unemployment and a lack of access to basic education and health facilities. Poverty also characterises a mental trauma amongst the individuals in society, which requires immediate attention. The psychological impression of desperation, frustration and depression is carried with poverty, whereby a scenario of poverty is inherited from one generation to another in which the people are deprived of accessing basic food, clothing, shelter and health facilities. People living on either one or no meal per day are overwhelmed with a feeling of having an ill-fate, which induces a sense of pessimism, leading to emotional and behavioural patterns; engendering mental trauma in the long run. Victims undergo a depressed cognitive development for suffering through poverty over an extended period of their life.