Malala Yousafzai

You know, growing up in Pakistan, we had not heard about therapy and mental health that now we are hearing where it's been accepted as a normal conversation.

People are opening up about it.

And we don't even have that much support around mental health.

Has it helped you?

Therapy has definitely helped me.

I remember the first session where I told my therapist all my problems, past, present, potential future ones.

And I said, OK, like now give me some medication.

How do we fix it?

And she took a deep breath and she said, you know, this is not how therapy works.

And she told me that I had PTSD and anxiety.

And this was like the first time that I

actually heard the word PTSD.

You know, people, I had come up, like I had heard it in a few different contexts, but I thought, you know, okay, I faced a trauma, but I think I don't have PTSD.

But seven years later, the PTSD appeared.

And, you know, I learned something that

When people talk about like a traumatic experience, it's not necessary that PTSD or the mental health issues appear immediately.

They could appear seven years later, 10 years later, like you never know.

And that happened in my case.

I mean, growing up, I had seen many girls lose the opportunity to complete their education and just their dreams to become a doctor, engineer, because they were married off.

So marriage, that was the last thing I wanted to think about.