How Punjab’s Health System Humiliates Mental Health Patients in DHQ Hospitals | Maryam Nawaz’s Healthcare Promises vs. Ground Reality

The Government of Punjab often announces subsidies and schemes in the name of “free healthcare,” as if these policies are a healing touch to the masses. DHQ (District Headquarters) hospitals are officially equipped with facilities, medicines, and staff to serve low-income individuals—especially those with chronic illnesses and mental health concerns. On paper, these subsidies appear generous and progressive. In reality, they are simply numbers to balance a budget—nothing more than superficial declarations to fulfill statistical promises. The deeper one goes inside these hospital walls, the more visible becomes a culture of hierarchy, gatekeeping, and systemic control, all held by the hands of medical superintendents (MS) and doctors who have transformed public care into psychological warfare.

As a clinical psychologist, I have witnessed how the power structure in government hospitals—especially DHQs—functions more like a command post than a healing institution. Those who are mentally unwell, already fighting battles with their own cognition, anxiety, or trauma, walk in with the last remaining strength of hope—only to be dehumanized. When someone with mental health needs requests specific medications such as benzodiazepines or antidepressants, the hospital staff immediately associates the request with addiction, manipulation, or madness. The person becomes a subject, not a patient. He or she is no longer seen as someone seeking relief, but as a file marked “unstable,” “drug-seeker,” or worse, “attention-seeker.”

What’s most alarming is the misuse of access to personal information. When a patient escalates their concern to a government office—for example, by writing a letter to demand a non-psychiatric hospital's provision of mental health medication—the government does not protect their identity. Instead, it transfers the patient’s full details, including diagnosis and complaint, back to the very hospital from which the mistreatment began. The result is catastrophic: the hospital authorities summon the patient, parade them through departments, involve unrelated doctors, and remind them at every step that they “dared to complain.” This isn’t healthcare; it’s public shaming dressed in professional clothing.

In many DHQ settings, the MS—who is more bureaucrat than healer—uses such moments to showcase authority. Nurses and doctors are called in, not for therapeutic review, but for the purpose of watching a patient being 'put in place.' The patient becomes a lesson for others: this is what happens when you challenge the system. This culture forces mentally ill patients to hide, suppress symptoms, or self-medicate quietly. They learn never to trust a doctor again. They learn that asking for help is equivalent to handing over your dignity on a silver platter.

This is especially severe in cases involving medications like benzodiazepines, which have been broadly and recklessly lumped under the narcotics category. Because a minority of patients may misuse them, the entire group of patients who genuinely need them is criminalized. Mental health patients are left to explain why they need these medicines again and again to junior doctors who hold neither the clinical training nor the emotional maturity to understand long-term psychiatric treatment. Instead of being understood, they are interrogated. Instead of receiving compassion, they are blamed. And with each passing day, this leads to unmonitored withdrawal, panic attacks, insomnia, and emotional breakdowns—none of which the system takes responsibility for.

In the end, the Government of Punjab continues to wave its flag of “free healthcare,” unaware—or perhaps indifferent—to the reality that the sickest patients are not those whose diseases are visible, but those whose pain cannot be measured in blood tests. Mental health patients, especially those who speak openly and assertively, become threats to this system of silent control. Their real crime is not needing medicine—it is having a voice.

The most disturbing part is that even when these patients try to follow the system—write letters, approach offices, fill forms—they are handed over to the very people who abuse that power. The government protects its structure, not its people. And in that gap, between what is promised and what is practiced, lies the shattered dignity of the most vulnerable minds of this province.

This blog exposes how mental health patients are humiliated in Punjab's DHQ hospitals under the control of MS and government doctors, despite health subsidies claimed by the state. Benzodiazepines are labeled as narcotics, causing unnecessary suffering. A clinical psychologist speaks.


If you've ever faced humiliation or neglect in a government hospital, your voice matters.  

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