ISLAMABAD - Children and youth constitute 65 per cent of Pakistans population, but the professionals working with them severely lack awareness, said Andrew Robert Duggan who is currently pursuing his PhD in Child Resiliency in University of Huddersfield. During a workshop session with members of various child-focused development sector organisations and donors titled developing critical thinking skills amongst professionals working with children and young people, he said that child health is an important issue for Pakistan because they constitute a large segment of society. The workshop was hosted by Children First and arranged by Human Resource Learning Centre in order to build capacity of field officials to use critical thinking skills while dealing with affected children and youth. He said that according to a questionnaire sent to hospitals in Lahore, 90 per cent paediatricians reported having no formal training in child mental health while only 16 per cent felt confident in assessing it. He also said that 90 per cent reported not being aware of international classification system regarding child mental health and 79 per cent reported that a psychiatric diagnosis in a child is stigmatising. One of the major issues highlighted in the session was about 71 per cent of the people reported they had no awareness of national guidelines around child protection issues. The session was told that the child mental health is one of the key areas according to the national health strategy, yet there is no database or research available on the subject. Speaking on mental health issues amongst children, he stressed that one must understand that child is not a problem rather problem is affecting the child and one must put efforts to resolve it. While telling the participants how to deal with such cases, Andrew said that a collaborative relationship is a must in treatment of a child as well as discussing the issues and problems. He added that Pakistan has no record or database that has statistics of children suffering mental distress, trafficking, sexual abuse, etc. The participants also shared their opinions and discussed a host of issues in the Pakistans cultural and social context. Susan Prosser, Emergency Specialist in the Child Protection Unit of Unicef said that stigmatised words shouldnt be used, and instead WHO/UNICEF standardized terms should be used while referring to mentally distressed people. University of Huddersfield and Children First has signed a MoU in order to develop a database of affected children and provision of extensive and reliable research on the issue of mental health as well as issues related to care-givers. Various other national and international NGOs have also shown interest in this effort. Mubashir Nabi, Chief Executive Officer Children First, closed the session with his ending remarks that his organisation will have a series of interaction on different thematic issues in the future. He said that this effort is first of its kind in the country, since there has been no effort to develop a database on child mental health issues or an extensive credible research.