A recent scientific study discovered that levels of anxiety, depression, and stress are increasing mostly among the young population of Karachi.
The influence of the Covid-19 pandemic has further deteriorated the psychological state as in some cases the ratio of people suffering from such circumstances increased by 40 percent.
Moreover, the facts and figures were gathered through scientific research conducted by the NED University of Engineering and Technology that studied more than 3,000 individuals at its Neurocomputation Lab. This lab is among the nine facilities set up under the National Centre of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI).
According to the experts, the study would help devise new improved strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems.
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Dr. Muhammad Abul Hasan, associate professor at the biomedical engineering department of NED University, said, “In the post-Covid scenario, we have found that issues of anxiety and stress have increased between 35 percent to 40 percent after the pandemic hit the country. This increase of percentage has been found among those who are suffering from mild and moderate psychological issues.”
“The alarming thing is that we have also recorded extreme and severe cases and in this category, we have found that 28 percent of cases of depression have increased followed by 27 percent in anxiety and 22 percent in stress,” he added.
While elucidating neurological biomarkers, Dr. Hasan, who is also the co-principal investigator at the Neuro Computation Lab, said: “Whenever we go through any psychological problem, it changes the brain patterns. There are regions in the brain. These regions have connections among them. After any psychological problem, these connections receive the impact. They may get stronger or in some cases weaker. Sometimes they disappear and sometimes new connections emerge. So basically we study these connections and analyse that they can be reversed.”
