Mental health in Afghanistan

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  Afghan patients rest behind a barbed wire wall.

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  A child peers through a mesh covered window as she stands in the yard.

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  Patients sit inside their room in the female section of the centre.

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  Male residents walk along a fenced pathway outside in the yard.

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  An Afghan patient dances in front of her room in the female ward.

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  A patient holds protective bars while looking through the window to the back of his room.

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  Clinic patients talk and laugh as they stand in the doorway to the female section of the only mental health rehabilitation centre in the city of Herat.

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  A female patient looks on as she stands next to an entrance outside of her ward.

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  Patients who have been chained together for security purposes walk along a fenced pathway in the centre.

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  An Afghan patient smiles as he looks out of a window from a room inside the rehabilitation centre.

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  A view of Herat city is seen in the background while patients rest behind a wall in the rehabilitation centre.

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  Disfigured patients look on as they rest against a wall inside the mental health centre.

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  Afghan patients socialise in the female section of the heath centre.

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  A male patient looks through a fence as he stands outside in the yard.

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  An Afghan patient squats against a wall chained to another patient for security purposes.

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  Afghan patients argue with one another outside in the yard.

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  Afghan men rest in the female ward at the only mental health rehabilitation centre in the city of Herat, Afghanistan.

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It is one of Afghanistan’s few mental rehabilitation centres. AFP photographer Aref Karimi visited the grimy facility in Herat where he discovered most cases of mental illness stem from the country’s 30 years of conflict. Run by the Afghan Red Cross, the clinic provides patients with basic food and medicine and is often overcrowded due to the facility being one of the few in the country offering long-term treatment. Thirty-five of the centre’s 265 patients are women.