Afghan Women’s Mental Health Deteriorates

Mental health among the women of Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating, according to a UN Women report. In April 2024, nearly seven in ten women surveyed reported that their feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression were either bad or very bad. A Bishnaw survey, conducted in March 2023, found that 8 percent of respondents knew a woman or girl who had attempted suicide.

Across four survey waves, between 73-91 percent of female respondents said that their mental health has worsened, either a little or significantly. In April 2024, some 64 percent of women consulted also reported that they did not feel “at all” safe when leaving home by themselves. When men were asked a similar question, 75 percent said they felt “totally safe” and 23 percent said “somewhat”. This dropped to 31 percent feeling “totally” safe and 63 percent feeling “somewhat” safe, when asked how they felt leaving the home with a female family member. UN Women highlights that this aligns with Afghan women’s comments that they are being targeted by DFA authorities and community members for being out in public.

One of the drivers of this mental health decline is not only the loss of influence in the public sphere, but also the private one. As the following chart shows, where 90 percent of female respondents said that they had at least a “good” level of influence on household decision-making in January 2023, that figure had dropped to just 38 percent by April 2024. In the latter survey, 42 percent of female respondents said that relationships with their male family members had worsened, compared to 22 percent of men.

The UN stresses how the lives of women and girls are deteriorating in Afghanistan amid overlapping crises, exacerbated by deepening gender inequalities. It has been over three years since the Taliban’s takeover and over 1,000 days since girls and women have been allowed to go to school or university.