Psychological and emotional problems are very common in Pakistan , and yet often remained unrecognized, misunderstood, and inappropriately addressed.

Common psychological problems include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Conversion (Hysteria)
• Obsessive and Compulsive Disorder
• Sleep disorder
• Eating disorders
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
• Personality problems such as non-assertiveness, poor confidence, low self - esteem etc.

In addition, what a large number of people don't realize is that the psychological effects of violence can be severe and long lasting. The impact of violence and abuse is often deeply ingrained and survivors require sustained follow-up support to enable full recovery. This involves working with women through a gradual process, which helps them to analyze their lives and experiences, and helps them to develop the necessary life skills to manage violence, abuse and trauma better. It has been our experience, that often the most cross cutting service required by victims and survivors of violence, and often sadly the most ignored, are counseling. It is a service that ideally should complement every other long-term support service provided to the victim or survivor, be it legal, shelter, or economic empowerment mechanisms.

Therefore, in order to create a nurturing, supportive, and safe atmosphere and to provide quality care to women suffering from mental and emotional problems, Zeest provides a counseling facility for women. The counseling service ensures a supportive, caring, and safe environment where women can get quality help and treatment from trained clinical psychologists at minimum charges on a sliding scale.

Counseling is mainly for female clients, (90%), but Zeest also caters to a small number of male clients (10%). We deal both with emotional problems and issue based clients. Our rationale for keeping the male client ratio low is that we believe that women constitute a vulnerable group in society and have less access to such facilities.

Counseling Facility

Zeest provides counseling to clients through phone, mail, email, in-person counseling, as well as counseling camps conducted for residents of Dar-ul-Aman (a government shelter for women) in Rawalpindi .

Referral system

In order to provide a comprehensive service for survivors it is important that safe and sensitive referral services also be available. Rozan has a small referral base and the quality of referral is ascertained beforehand. Follow-ups are carried out in order to ensure that clients have received the best possible care.

• Click here to download Zeest's Counseling Services flyer (67kb PDF file).

• Click here for Zeest's Counseling poster (100kb JPG file).

Here are comments about Zeest from some of our counseling clients:

• After two years of counseling I now have the ability to speak at any forum about my problems and the violence I experienced.
• My circumstances have not changed, but I have learnt how to deal with my problems.
• I was very confused about my life and had to depend on others for any major decisions. However, I now feel very confident and the decision to take a divorce from my husband was my own. I have learnt through counseling how to take control of my own life.
• I have received great support through the process of counseling as after my husband's death I went into depression and no one understood what I was going through.