Psychological Issues among Adults Following the 2025 Indo-Pakistan Conflict: The Mediating Role of Social Support

Abstract

Armed conflict is one of the more psychologically damaging experiences a civilian population can go through, and it commonly leaves depression, anxiety, stress, and disrupted sleep in its wake. The 2025 escalation of the Indo-Pakistan conflict created a sustained climate of fear and uncertainty for Pakistani civilians, but until now no one had actually measured its psychological effects using validated instruments. We set out to do that here, examining how common conflict-related psychological distress was among Pakistani adults and, more specifically, whether perceived social support helps explain the link between that distress and depression and anxiety. Data came from 302 adults (M age = 24.98 years, SD = 4.00; 66.6% female) recruited through purposive sampling from communities in the Bahawalpur district of Punjab. Participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) along with three scales built for this study,a Conflict-Related Psychological Distress Scale, a Sleep Disturbance Scale, and a Social Support Scale (all α ≥ .96). Depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep disturbance all came out at moderate levels, while conflict-related distress was somewhat higher (M = 3.11, SD = 0.86), sitting above the scale's midpoint. Conflict-related distress correlated positively with every distress outcome we measured (r = .50–.61, p < .001), and social support correlated negatively with all of them (r = −.42 to −.50, p < .001). Using Baron and Kenny's (1986) regression-based approach, we found that social support partially mediated the relationship between conflict-related distress and both depression and anxiety, accounting for roughly 22% of the total effect on depression. Gender and education level did not significantly affect any of the outcomes. Together, these findings mark the 2025 conflict as a genuine collective psychological stressor for Pakistani civilians and point to social support as something that can actually be acted on to reduce conflict-related psychological harm, with clear implications for both clinical practice and mental health policy.