Kashmir struggles to cope with tide of trauma
In a consultation room in a Kashmiri hospital, Parvaiz Ahmed struggles to find the words to describe how his interrogation at the hands of India's security forces seven years ago has left him traumatised.
Speaking in a whisper and barely looking up from the table, Ahmed's face is wracked with pain as he speaks of his sleepless nights, still haunted by his months in detention in 2009.
"I worry all the time that they will come back and arrest me again," the 38-year-old tells his trauma therapist.
"We can see maybe 190 patients per day and I average around 100," says Arshad Hussain as he explains the workload at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital.
"Sixty to 80 percent of them are trauma, depression or PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) patients," he adds.
The hospital is situated in the centre of Srinagar, the largest city in Kashmir -- an often achingly beautiful Himalayan region which is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both.
A Doctors Without Borders survey last year found more than 1.5 million living in the Kashmir Valley have symptoms of depression.
Some are relatives of those killed, such as Mohammad Shafi Bhat, who lost his voice for several years after troops shot dead his 23-year-old son Bashir Ahmad Bhat in 2014, and still finds speaking a struggle.
Shafi, 50, is barely audible as he tries to recount the events surrounding Bashir's shooting as he waters the flowers around his son's grave in Srinagar's 'Martyrs' Cemetery'.
He soon gives up and instead pulls a miniature photo portrait of his son from his wallet, his face streaming in tears.
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