he call was from one of my trainee doctors: “Where are you sir? We need you.” When I reached the ICU, some senior doctors were already there standing around a bed screened off from the rest of the unit. “It’s one of our medical students; she attempted suicide.” Over my trainee’s shoulder, I could see a young woman lying still in the bed, a tube in her mouth hooked up to the ventilator; some other tubes going in and out of both arms.

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. They told me it happened this morning. Someone found her in her room.”

The story emerged in pieces. The young woman is from a small town outside Lahore. I had seen her once or twice in a cycling group I belong to—energetic and talkative. Now she was fighting for her life. Her parents came to the hospital the next day, shocked and upset. Her father had retired from a minor government job and was trying to start a small business; the family was having a hard time meeting even the minimal university and hostel fees. She had gotten an offer to work nights at one of the myriad call centres providing services to companies in the US and Europe, but university policy and the security environment in Lahore made that impossible.

She had fought with her parents repeatedly. She had also, we discovered, been overusing anxiety and pain medicines; she had snapped and taken a handful of pills. Once she recovered, she told us it was to “try and sleep.” “I just wanted to forget everything for a few hours,” is what she told us. I have seen her around campus since and she seems to be doing well. She came up to me recently: “I want to come see you. Can I?” “Of course,” I told her, “Whenever you want.”

She still has a couple of years to go. Once she becomes a doctor, she can do whatever she wants—in Pakistan or abroad. Demand for medical services keeps climbing.

Her dilemma reminded me of a day a few years ago. I had come home tired after work only to be greeted by my elder son, looking more than his usual serious self. He was 17 at the time. “You need to come talk to him,” he told me regarding my younger son. “He was up on the roof. I had to talk him down.” Alarmed, I went to my younger son’s room only to find him close to tears and refusing to talk. To my lasting regret, I slapped him. When I calmed myself down, I sat with him. Eventually he also calmed down and we talked for a long while. It was nothing specific. He had always struggled in school and found it hard to make friends. His art teacher once told us at a parent-teacher meeting how he refused to socialise with any other kids but would spend all his free time sitting with a stray cat in the corridor, stroking it and feeding it whatever he had at hand. Art was the one subject he actually liked—less to do with what was being taught, I suspect, and much more to do with his teacher’s affection towards him.

Those of us who are parents of young adults mostly listen and interject gently from time to time. The young people argue vociferously. We finish and say goodbye, returning next Sunday.

Here’s two young people caught in the vortex of social change now engulfing Pakistan. Parental styles forged in bygone eras, poverty, wars, genocides all being live-streamed in real time into their phones and their minds.

All this can be very disorienting.

For a while, my younger son had expressed an interest in painting. My late father, a psychologist, encouraged it: “Let him get it all out on the canvas.” We hired an art teacher and still have his paintings hanging around the house. Later, it was guitar playing. He badgered me a long time for an electric guitar. Eventually, he saved up enough money to buy one and showed me photos of him playing at a college concert. He is past the dangers of adolescent risk-taking now and talks about jobs, studying abroad and marriage. One day, a couple of years ago, he said: “You know Baba, my friend’s dad won’t let him study what he wants. You let me study fashion.” He sounded incredulous. It was a deeply gratifying moment.

In the Sunday morning cycling group that I lead, we have lots of young medical students—men and women—who join us for coffee. Occasionally, the young woman (mentioned above) comes as well. The conversation veers between career choices, marriage, fulfilment, the gender gap, parents, teachers and everything in between. Those of us who are parents of young adults mostly listen and interject gently from time to time. The young people argue vociferously. We finish and say goodbye, returning next Sunday to do it all over again.

I would like to think the young people are learning something from us. The opposite also holds true.

*If you or anyone you know is in distress or experiencing suicidal thoughts, please seek professional assistance.

The writer is a psychiatrist and faculty member at King Edward Medical University. His latest book is Secrets: Stories of Psychiatry from America and Pakistan (Sang-e Meel Publishers).