By: Raha
Hania went to school passionately and worked hard to do her assignments. The mix of passion and hardwork helped her to be a top student in her class.
But things changed suddenly.
The Taliban took power nearly one year ago, and one of the first decisions they made was to close secondary schools for girls, meaning Hania, a 15-year-old eighth grade student, wasn’t allowed to return to her class.
She has been battling severe depression since then, her mother Ziagul said.
“Taliban took the lessons and homework from my daughter,” she said, “she suffers from mental and psychological disorder after the closure of the schools.”
Ziagul said Hania’s depression was so acute that she took her to the doctor who prescribed her antidepressants around four months ago.
When a Rukhshana Media journalist visited Hania’s home recently, she was in her room with its curtains shut, chewing her fingernails. Her family said Hania has secluded herself from the rest of the world, and that she has lost a lot of weight.
“She sometimes laughs and cries for no reason, and she doesn’t talk to us anymore, she doesn’t even talk to the girl next door, who was her close friend,” said Rahmat, Hania’s older brother. “And she always sits in the corner of the room and reads novels and re-reads the same book several times.”
It has been nearly one year since girls’ schools have remained closed, and it is not clear when the Taliban may reopen them.
Hundreds of thousands, and by some estimates millions of girls, are kept out of school due to the Taliban’s ban on female education. And many of these girls suffer from anxiety and depression.
A source from Kabul’s Mental Health Department said the number of women and female students who visit mental health clinics have increased significantly after the Taliban’s return to power. He didn’t provide further details.
International human rights organizations have expressed grave concerns over the Taliban’s ban on girls education, and the exclusion of women from the workforce.
“The Taliban deliberately deprive millions of women and girls of their human rights and subject them to systematic discrimination,” Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International said in a statement published last monnth. “If the international community does not act, women and girls in Afghanistan will be left to fend for themselves, and this will undermine human rights everywhere else.”
The Taliban’s return to power affected Hania’s entire family. Her mother, Ziagul, who worked as a cleaner in the former government and used her income to support the family, also lost her job. But the impact of not being able to go school on Hania was unbearable.
She has been taking Risperidone regularly to battle nervous breakdowns.
Despite being a single mother and unemployed, Ziagul has taken Hania to several neuropsychiatric doctors, helping her to recover from depression.
Ziagul’s husband died eight years ago, and she had been working to feed her three children until the Taliban’s return to power last year.
Masooda Nazimi, a psychotherapist in Kabul, said mental health problems are increasing among Afghans, especially women, who have been deprived of their basic rights.
“By eliminating women from society and closing schools for girls above the sixth grade, the Taliban imposed irreversible negative impacts on women,” she said. “Most of my clients suffer from mental and emotional breakdowns.”
Another doctor at a mental health hospital, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the majority of his “patients are female school students,” who are struggling with “confusion and fear” about their future.
No one knows about the plight of schoolgirls and the mental health problems they are going through more than their family members.
“The loss of the future is not a small thing,” said Rahmat, Hania’s brother. “The Taliban should not take away the right that God and his prophet gave to women for their political interests.”
Hania, Rahmat and Ziagul are pseudonyms
