People in Pakistan generally ignore mental illness, they talk very little about it and they generally think that if we tell anyone about it, they will think we are crazy.
While the reality is different, a person can share his psychological problems or mental confusion with anyone if he wants and clinical psychologists are the best for this, from whom you do not even have to fear your mental confusion or problems. Such psychologists will also help you to get out of this mental confusion. MM News arranged a special meeting with Dr. Tahira Anus to discuss this issue.Â
MM News: What do you think is the difference between a clinical psychologist and a therapist?
Tahira Anus: The two are almost the same, the clinical psychologist only listens to the problems while a therapist satisfies the patient after listening to the problems.
MM News: How much trouble do you face when patients come to you?
Tahira Anus: We don’t have any particular problem because people usually want to talk to someone, they want to tell their problem to someone who can hear them completely, so when a patient comes to us, some sessions Only then does he tell us his problem.
MM News: In our society, people are very embarrassed to go to a psychologist, what do you think about it?
Tahira Anus: Yes, this impression is very common among the people. Whenever most people come to us, they just want no one to know about it because in our society it is considered very bad while necessary. Not only do people come to us when they are crazy but they can also come to us for their career counseling and solutions to their marital problems, so this impression should be completely eradicated from the society.
MM News: Do you also do pre-wedding counseling?
Tahira Anus: Yes and I think it is very important because we have pre-wedding shootings but not counseling, the benefit of this counseling is that you are told how to move on with your new relationship, which is very important to reduce the divorce rate.
MM News: Have you ever felt that the people around you need therapy, not your patient?
Tahira Anus: Many times it seems that the people around her need therapy more than the patient but unfortunately we can only treat the patient, in such cases, we become helpless because no matter how much counseling we do around the patient. People do not allow him to recover.
MM News: How much do you think people think about your profession?
Tahira Anus: I think people’s thinking has changed a lot. If I look a few years ago today, people would not believe that we should go to a psychologist.
But now I can say that society is changing a lot in this regard. People now believe that we have a psychological problem, so we should go to the doctor.
MM News: Have you been interested in becoming a psychologist from the beginning?
Tahira Anus: No, I had no interest in becoming a psychologist. I wanted to do ACCA, but by the time I graduated, the field was not considered suitable for girls. I studied psychology and then later I became interested in it.
MM News: How many hours are your sessions?
Tahira Anus: Generally, the session should not be more than 1 hour, but there are some patients whose session sometimes lasts up to 90 minutes, so it depends a lot on the patient.
MM News: You’re a key member of Listening Souls, can you tell us something about that?
Tahira Anus: The idea to start it came from the fact that most of the people who are there cannot afford the fees of a psychologist. There is no such thing as an online facility.
That’s what we started with Listening Souls, it has 24 hours online counseling facility and there is no fee, so people can benefit a lot from that, he said. You can also get counseling with the help of our platform.
MM News: You are also a member of Healing Souls, tell us something about it?
Tahira Anus: This is a program in which we have about 90 members who go to such shelter homes, old homes, and other places and spend time with the people living there because the people of such places have nothing to do. Yes, they are just spending their time.
We go to these people, eat with them, play with them and take them for fun which makes them feel much better.
