'No-one comes for us': The women trapped in Afghanistan's mental health system

[IwantToRetire]

High on a hill in the west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, behind a steel gate topped with barbed wire, lies a place few locals speak of, and even fewer visit.

The women's wing of a mental health centre run by the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) is the largest of only a handful of facilities in the country dedicated to helping women with mental illnesses.
Locals call it Qala, or the fortress.

The BBC gained exclusive access to the crowded centre where staff find it difficult to cope with the 104 women currently within its walls.

Article continues at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80dg700dego

Wasn't sure which existing thread I should have posted this to, so have started a new thread. Maybe we need an Afghan women's FWR treads index?

Bumping

That sounds like Victorian England. Inhumane.

In a culture where women are routinely punished for 'dishonouring' their family or their society, how many of these women are deliberately abandoned in the clinic?

Zainab's father said her repeated attempts to run away were dishonouring him, and he argued it was better for her and her family that she is confined to the centre.

I don't understand what's in it for the men? Apart from a power trip, of course.

So basically they’re locked up for life for the “mental illness “ of being inconvenient to men. What century is this?

Worth remembering that in the UK women were being locked away in asylums until around the 1950s. May have been later.

And in the late 1990s there were stories of women who had never been freed.

And many were there because their families thought their independent behaviour made they were mad.

Not forgetting the forced labotomies.

ie we are only within living memory slightly "ahead" of how women are being treated in Afghanistan.

And not that I am saying religion justifies violence against women, but in the UK it wasn't about some hard line fundamentalist religion. It was purely about women not conforming to social "norms".

the whole situation there is so horrific it is hard to compute. What are the best organisations to support?

Home - The Linda Norgrove Foundation - this organisation has been doing good work. They managed to get their local female staff to the UK after the chaos of the Taliban take-over.

There seems to be no way of supporting women in Afghanistan.

Or if it is happening there is no publicity because it would be stopped.

The couple from the UK who had been running a support organisation in Afghanistan for some time were arrested earlier this year, and are still in prison.

And it doesn't look good for them https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/21/elderly-british-couple-face-dying-afghanistan-detention-peter-barbie-reynolds

And suspect anyone local will get even worse treatment.

There is this https://malala.org/countries/afghanistan

And this is a recent announcement https://malala.org/news-and-voices/3-million-in-grants-to-defend-afghan-girls-rights

New grantee partners are reaching more than 10,000 girls inside Afghanistan with online and in-person education and building legal and political momentum to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Sadly this wont undermine the attitude that lets men think they can lock up women who dont conform.

Came across this by change. NB - not a specifically women's protest.

This saturday in London
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peaceful-protest-at-uk-ministry-of-defence-4-years-after-taliban-takeover-tickets-1538358584939?aff=oddtdtcreator

Dreadful. Those poor, poor women.

So should they be throwing themselves under the king's horse?

How can they help themselves?

In the earlier post I made about the Mala Fund, it does seem that women are making use of the virtual world. (There was a BBC series about this mentioned on another thread I cant now find.)

Now this info.

https://bindinghook.com/the-digital-repression-of-the-iranian-womens-movement/