The Silent Trauma: Psychological Impact of Conflict in Jammu & Kashmir

The Silent Trauma: Psychological Impact of Conflict in Jammu & Kashmir

In Jammu & Kashmir, the sound of gunfire, midnight raids, and enforced disappearances do not just instill fear, they rewire the human psyche, leaving behind scars that last far beyond the conflict itself. Living under oppression takes a deep emotional, mental, and physical toll. The trauma of disappearances, violence, and daily survival leaves lasting scars on mental health. Anxiety, depression, and PTSD are widespread, yet support remains scarce.



Despite their suffering, Kashmiris continue to endure with quiet resilience, carrying their pain in silence. Wake up each morning in a fog, with the knot in your stomach, afraid that today is the day something horrible might happen to you, the death of a child or spouse, the sound of gunfire outside your window. That's the hard truth of many people in Jammu and Kashmir. The fear is ever present, and the emotional wounds from decades of brutality run deep. You can’t just turn away that trauma it follows you, alters your life in ways that you never could have imagined.


According to Global Health Survey, the estimated prevalence of mental distress in IIOJ&K was 45%, 26% with anxiety and 19% with PTSD. This is because of the military actions taken on daily basis that creates the never-ending fear in the minds of Kashmiris. It’s like a practice of being hopeless, full of fear and traumatized. This practice is done on daily basis that makes their minds subtle about the fear. This stops them from doing anything for their rights on the mark of lives of their loved ones. The children there are growing up with the seeing all the bloody areas that results in creation of a generation with fear and low self-confidence. This is an important point to raise because this decides the fate of IIOJ&K because it involves the youth of Kashmiris.


In the late 1700’s, a “nightmare” was defined as a disease in which a person while sleeping suppose that he has a great mass laying upon him and the Kashmiri children, men and women are having these nightmares and bearing this weight since 1947 that impacts their mental health deeply.


Another important point to ponder is the unwanted noise. Beside all the brutality, there are so many unwanted noises of the weapons that has a wide range of psychological impacts. The brain is always monitoring sounds for signs of danger, even during sleep. With continued exposure to noise pollution, a person’s sensitivity to noise pollution increases. Noise above 45 decibels can make it difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep or wake up too early and the sound of pellet guns used in IIOJ&K ranges from 76 to 134 decibels depending upon the rifle, caliber ammunition used. This means that the noise of armaments and weapons used on daily basis at line of control and within the boundary of IIOJ&K has long lasting psychological impacts on Kashmiris. This point is not prominent but its really important to take into account because of its major impacts specially on children.


The young Kashmiris are constrained just within the boundary of IIOJ&K and that’s effecting their social exposure and results in the thinking of lost and dark future leading to a great number of young people committing suicide. They are just exposed to brutality, blood and burns all around that limits their thinking range in a narrow way. A small boundary, no social exposure and the dark future is more than enough for a person to get captured into trauma that moves along with the person throughout his or her life.


In IIOJ&K, there are severe climate change issues going on from many years and now increased to a high level due to large number of military activities, - firing, grenades, shelling- land degradation and disruption in traditional land management and this climate change has a great psychological impact on Kashmiris. Studies have revealed that increasing temperature may leads to aggression. This also in higher level of stress, depression and anxiety among the people. This sense of fear is often referred to as “eco-anxiety”.


Think about the aged people of IIOJ&K who are suffering and watching their young ones die in front of them. Their daughters abused in front of them, their children kidnapped, the blood of their sons and all that stuff. This all happening in front of a person at this age is nothing but a great mental torture.


Women of IIOJ&K are facing the variety of challenges effecting their mental health. They are not only facing the same torture and psychological challenges as that of men and children but also facing physical and gender-based violence. Women who have been physically abused or raped have been accused of providing food o shelter to the militants or have been ordered to identify their male relatives. Afterwards, these women might face sadness, get angry. They might try to deny and refuse what happened and to push away those horrible thoughts. They will feel a sudden and recurring emotional outburst while performing various house chores and this will last long with their lives.


Think about those children who are raised up without father or mother who died because of military actions. Psyche of that child would be really different and there are larger number of such children in IIOJ&K. They will face trust issues, low self-esteem, a daily fight between them and the actions around them, abandonment, low self-worth and most importantly they will face difficulty in managing emotions.


The writer is a research intern at the Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR) and serves as the Central Coordinator of HEAL Pakistan, an initiative dedicated to fostering humanity, education empowerment, awareness, and leadership

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