Depression.pk exists for one reason: so that someone feeling completely alone — at 2am, in any city in Pakistan, in their own language — can find one place that understands them and a real path forward.
The gap between need and access is staggering. Cost, stigma, and geography keep millions silent. When someone finally wants help, the barriers are immediate: who do I call? Can I afford it? What if someone finds out?
Depression.pk is a small attempt to lower all three walls at once — a free companion called Zara who is always available, a searchable directory of 2,400+ verified mental-health professionals across 45 cities, and an education library written in plain language, without shame.
It is a Legacy Mission project. Not a business. No ads. No selling anyone's story. Every feature that helps someone in crisis is and will always be free.
Serial entrepreneur · Technologist · AI builder · Philanthropist
— and, to the people who know him, the mysterious healer
BSc (IT) · PGD (IT) · MCP · MCSA
Imran Hashmi has spent his working life building things. A technologist by training and a serial entrepreneur by temperament, he has started, run and sold businesses across print, manufacturing, signage and software, and now spends most of his days building with AI — which is why Zara exists at all. Depression.pk is not one of those businesses. It is what he does with what they paid for.
British-Pakistani, and someone who has watched too many people suffer in silence — because in our culture, we do not talk about this. Having straddled two worlds his entire life, he knows exactly how the cultural script — log kya kahenge, what will people say — stops someone reaching out until it is too late. That understanding is why this site exists.
There is a part of this that does not fit on a CV, and he did not put it there — other people did. For as long as his friends can remember, people have gone to him when something has gone wrong. A bereavement. A marriage coming apart. A mind that will not stop at night. They go to him in person, and they message him from whichever country they are in, and they have been doing it for years.
What they say afterwards is consistent enough that his own circle gave him a name for it: they call him the mysterious healer — the one who takes the grief off you and you cannot quite explain how. He has never used the title himself. It was given to him, and it stuck.
“Come with a receptive mind, and miracles are possible.”
He says something else, often, and he says it proudly: people have come to him as injured chicks, and the ones who arrived with a receptive mind and a real will to change did not leave as chicks. They left as eagles. Some of them, he will tell you, as dragons — and he means it about their families, their health, their work, how they love and what they went on to do for the people around them.
“I took on injured chicks and turned them into eagles. Some of them into dragons.”
He makes no medical claim, and never has. What is offered here is not treatment and is not a substitute for a doctor — this site exists precisely because people need both. But the instinct underneath it is the same one his friends have relied on for twenty years: that somebody in pain should be met, not managed. Zara answers at three in the morning because he always did.
Based in Manchester, UK. The businesses are what pay for this one, which is why nothing here has ever needed to make money.
Professor of Urdu Language, Government College Bhimber, Azad Kashmir · Sufi & Scholar
A beacon of light who taught for over five decades, shaping thousands of students across every walk of life. He passed away in 2016. Imran Hashmi's father — Depression.pk carries forward his lifelong devotion to lifting others, offered under his spiritual supervision and remembered always with love.
Built without surveillance. Every design decision starts with: what is the least we need to know while still helping?
We are a small, volunteer-led initiative. If you are a mental-health professional who wants to be listed, a counsellor who can give time, or a developer who believes in the mission — we would love to hear from you.
