Are Pakistani Dramas Finally Taking Mental Health Seriously or Just Using It for TRPs?

Look, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. For decades, Pakistani television has treated mental health like a dirty secret. You know the drill. If a character was depressed, they were just "pareshan" or maybe someone did some "kala jadoo" on them. If they had anxiety, they needed to pray more. Therapy? Tauba tauba, what will the relatives say? But recently, things have started shifting on our screens. The question is, are we actually getting better at portraying mental health, or are writers just using it as a shiny new plot device to grab TRPs?

Here's the thing. When I first watched Pyar Ke Sadqay, I was genuinely surprised. Yumna Zaidi's Mahjabeen and Bilal Abbas's Abdullah weren't just quirky for the sake of comedy. They showed clear signs of neurodivergence, specifically traits of autism and severe social anxiety. The way Abdullah would freeze up when his stepfather yelled at him, or how Mahjabeen couldn't read social cues—it felt real. Yaar, it was heartbreaking. But even then, the drama couldn't resist turning their trauma into a romance trope. We loved them, bilkul, but did the narrative truly address their mental health, or did it just make them look cute and helpless so we could root for them?

And honestly? That's my biggest issue with how our industry handles these topics. We take something incredibly serious and water it down until it's palatable for the prime-time aunties. Take Parizaad, for example. Ahmed Ali Akbar gave the performance of a lifetime. The way he captured Parizaad's crippling social anxiety, his deep-seated inferiority complex, and the sheer exhaustion of existing in a society that only values superficial beauty—wah wah, kya baat hai. That scene where he finally breaks down and admits he doesn't know how to be loved? It shattered me. But let's be real. The story eventually turned into a rags-to-riches fantasy. His mental health struggles were almost magically cured by wealth and power. Because apparently, money