Middle East

Nepali psychiatrist guidance for Nepalese in Kuwait

Kuwait has long been one of the largest destinations for Nepali labour migration, with an especially large number of Nepali women working as live-in domestic helpers and housemaids inside private households, alongside men in construction, security and service roles, almost all on employer-sponsored (kafala-linked) work visas. Live-in domestic work brings a particular kind of isolation: little or no day off, no coworkers to talk to, and daily life entirely inside a single household under an employer's supervision, which can make even recognising a mental health problem difficult when there is no one nearby to notice a change. Passport retention by employers, though restricted by law, still happens in practice for some domestic workers and can add a real sense of being trapped. Contracts of two years without a home visit remain common, and the combination of remittance pressure, distance from children being raised by relatives back home, and fear that raising a complaint could mean losing the job entirely keeps many enduring symptoms silently for months before reaching out.