The Times recently reported on Atimiaphobia which can cause significant anxiety and distress and academics and campaigners have suggested that it be recognised as a specific mental health condition.
The study that highlighted Atimiaphobia was conducted in Pakistan where issues that are linked to ‘shame’ based societies can have greater impacts on the mental health and well-being of greater numbers of people. This includes a greater focus and pressure on younger people to act in a certain social way so that they do not ‘bring shame’ to the family or where sex before marriage is seen through a shame-based lens that can have wider impacts on the families of women involved.
The study pointed to Atimiaphobia as being a mental health anxiety condition that is linked to a “fear of losing your honour” or “being labelled as shameless”. The report found that people who suffered these phobias had significant impacts on their mood and their anxiety levels. They also found that individuals who suffered from it found it harder to hold down emotional relationships and in navigating through social situations and were more than likely to always feel a high sense of anxiety and with associated mental ruminations.
These findings point to a greater sense of responsibility being associated with Atimiaphobia and a heightened sense of social and collective blame that is internalised. Counsellors and therapists may also want to look out for associated low self-esteem, low mood and a greater degree of responsibility, akin to aspects of moral anxiety if they come across people in their surgeries who present with a fear of ‘losing their honour’ or that of their family name.
Personal Observations
My father was born in Pakistan and moved from the country after graduating as an electrical engineer. I have visited the country twice and understand the cultural norms and how honour-based issues are so intrinsically linked to how people behave, talk and socialise. This can also be observed through the types of language and discourse that take place in Urdu or Punjabi. Shame is a term that is vocalised regularly in daily conversations in Pakistan and the term is loaded with a heaviness that seems crushing to the ego and to the sense of self. One can only imagine the loaded impacts for women in Pakistan who still have to challenge and campaign against shame-based values that entangle them into keeping silent. ‘dressing modestly’ or taking up home-based roles in the family structure.
One of the things that struck me was that the Times reporting did not highlight the different impacts on both genders with women having to carry the heaviest societal impacts if they deemed that they had done something that was against cultural, religious or social norms in Pakistan. For men, I suspect that Atimiaphobia would have been linked to employment related activities, sexual activities or through peer group engagements where online statements that they had made could be construed as being shameful. Furthermore, Pakistan still remains a stratified class-based country. Saying or doing something that was not associated with ‘higher classes’ would also more than likely lead to Atimiaphobia impacts on young men in the country.
I can only wonder how Atimiaphobia will affect the next generation of young people in the country, given social pressures on them and given access to mobile phones that open them up to a wider global social environment. Additionally, given the fact that gender-based shame is still an acute issue in countries like Pakistan, counsellors and psychotherapists should be taking into account this new phobia when working with people who may have been born and brought up in countries like Pakistan and who present in their surgeries.
