Gallup® – World Emotional Health Report 2025 – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1179

Gallup® – World Emotional Health Report 2025 – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1179

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1179 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

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Preamble

Gallup® State of the World’s Emotional Health 2025. [Quote] In a world increasingly marked by political, social and emotional fragmentation, the responsibility to safeguard health has never been more urgent. At the World Health Summit, our leitmotif for 2025 is clear: Taking Responsibility for Health in a Fragmenting World. This principle recognizes that health is not only about medicine or policy; it is also about the emotional fabric that holds societies together. 

This 2-part blog post is based on the insights from the above report; Pakistan perspective has been added. Link to report at the end.

Part 2: Implications & Actions – For Policy, Systems and Health

Why emotional health demands policy attention

We often silo mental-health or wellness as a personal matter; the Gallup report reminds us it is also a societal issue:

Elevated negative emotions across populations correlate with shorter life-expectancy.

They weaken social fabric, reduce trust, navigation capacity and increase risk of conflict, instability and fragility.

They degrade productivity, raise health-care costs (via stress-related illnesses, pain, chronic disease) and weaken resilience.

Therefore, emotional health is not a luxury; it is a core indicator of societal wellbeing, requiring investment, monitoring and strategic policy.

Key Action Areas

Drawing on the report and wider knowledge, I outline several priority action areas for leaders:

Treat emotions as public-health vital signs

Governments should integrate emotional-experience indicators (worry, stress, sadness) into national wellbeing dashboards alongside unemployment, inflation, health-outcomes.

Ministries of health/finance should set targets to reduce negative-experience shares (for example reduce global worry from 39% towards a lower benchmark over 5–10 years).

Annual national reports should publish emotional-health data disaggregated by gender, age, region to identify hotspots and measurement.

Early-intervention and Prevention

Since chronic worry and stress contribute to physical disease and shorter life-expectancy, health systems must incorporate psychosocial screening and prevention (for example in primary care: identifying persistent worry, stress, pain) rather than waiting for severe mental-health or physical-health presentations.

Schools, workplaces and community settings should be sites of emotional-health promotion: resilience training, social-support mechanisms, connection, mental wellbeing programs.

Organizations (businesses, NGOs) should recognize that emotional health is tied to productivity: high stress and worry translate into absenteeism, lower performance, higher turnover.

Strengthen Social-cohesion, Respect and Connection

The high level of “being treated with respect” globally (88%) is an asset. Policies should build on respect, dignity and inclusion as foundational to emotional health.

Community programs that promote social inclusion, reduce loneliness, integrate marginalized groups can reduce distress.

Urban planning, public spaces, social infrastructure matter: places where people feel safe, connected and respected produce better emotional outcomes.

Address Structural Factors: Inequality, Peace, Fragility

The strong link between emotional distress and weak peace/institutions means emotional-health policy cannot ignore governance, conflict, inequality.

Investment in institutional quality, the rule of law, equitable resource distribution (Positive Peace Index factors) is fundamental.

In fragile states and high-conflict regions, emotional-health data should form part of risk-assessment and humanitarian formulating early interventions.

Tailored Responses for High-risk Groups

Women consistently report more worry, sadness and pain. Thus gender-specific emotional-wellbeing intervention is needed—recognizing women’s economic, social and care-burdens.

Younger adults (15–49) report higher stress/anger; mid-life adults report greatest stress. Tailored supports (youth counselling, mid-life resilience programs) should be designed.

In regions with conflict, displacement or climate-shock exposure, emotional-health support must specialize (trauma-informed care, community rebuilding).

Data, research & innovation

More longitudinal data: understanding how daily emotional experiences translate into health outcomes (life-expectancy, chronic disease, productivity).

Applied research: what interventions (digital, community-based, workplace) reduce worry, stress and sadness at scale?

Innovation: digital platforms for real-time measurement of emotional states, early prompts, community support, workplace dashboards.

Implications for Pakistan and Similar Developing-country Contexts

While the Gallup report is global, its insights are highly relevant for Pakistan (and similar South-Asian / developing-countries) where economic, social and institutional stresses are high and emotional-health policy is still nascent.

Pakistan-specific reflections

Pakistan faces high socio-economic stress: inflation, job uncertainty, climate-shocks (floods, heat), security and institutional strains. In such conditions, worry (global 39%) may be even higher locally though national data is limited—this calls for better measurement.

Gender and youth burdens: Pakistani women face dual pressures (care burdens + economic participation). Young adults face uncertain employment and higher stress. Emotional-health programs must recognize these contexts.

Institutional and peace-related stress: Parts of Pakistan (border regions, displaced communities, climate-affected zones) may experience higher negative emotions due to fragility, institutional gaps. Emotional-health data can act as early-warning for local risk.

Opportunity for leap-frog progress: By integrating emotional-health monitoring into health-system reforms (e.g., mental-health, primary care, social protection), Pakistan can get ahead. The stable positive-emotion indicators (smile, respect, learning) provide a foundation for resilience.

Business and workplace implications: Pakistani firms should recognize emotional health as a productivity and retention issue. Employee-wellbeing programs, stress-management offerings, social-connection initiatives can improve outcomes.

The business and healthcare sector opportunity

For Pakistan’s healthcare, pharmaceutical, digital-health and corporate sectors, the emotional-health agenda offers strategic opportunities:

Health-tech start-ups creating mobile/AI tools for stress tracking, social-connection apps, remote coaching.

Pharma companies recognizing the link between emotional stress and chronic disease progression (cardio, diabetes) and partnering on holistic wellbeing programs.

Corporate wellbeing providers offering stress-management and emotional-health modules to workplaces, improving retention, productivity and culture.

Public–private partnerships to deliver emotional-resilience programs in schools, communities and disaster-affected zones.

By aligning business strategy with emotional-health needs, sectors can capture value and contribute to national wellbeing.

Sum Up

The Gallup “State of the World’s Emotional Health” report is a clarion call: how people feel each day matters deeply, not just for personal wellbeing, but for national health, stability, productivity and peace. Negative emotional experiences are rising globally and remain elevated; yet amidst this, positive experiences hold firm, offering a foundation of resilience.

For leaders in Pakistan, this insight is highly relevant. Emotional wellbeing must move beyond an individual wellness topic to a strategic priority: embedded in health systems, labor policy, education, corporate culture and social inclusion. The emotional-health agenda is not “soft” or peripheral—it is central to wellbeing, economic performance and societal resilience.

If policymakers, businesses and civil society act now, measuring emotions, intervening early, strengthening social cohesion and integrating emotional health into mainstream systems—then we can build societies where worry, stress and sadness recede, and respect, connection, laughter and learning thrive.

In short, we must treat emotions like public-health vital signs, because when people feel well, societies function better.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately.

Reference:

https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/state-of-worlds-emotional-health.aspx?utm_source=public_sector&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=global_emotions_report_october_1_10132025&utm_term=information&utm_content=read_the_report_cta_1