Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Support for Sexual and Gender Minorities in Karnataka

Building Capacities for Community Mental Health through Courses for Gender Development Practitioners, Youth Entering Professions

Recreation and Safe Spaces for Dalit and Adivasi Leaders

Ongoing Support and Scaling-up of Community Mental Health Programmes in Kerala

As a community-led organisation, Jeeva focusses upon issues around mental health, providing crisis intervention, livelihood support, and community media for working class sexual minorities in Karnataka. In their project with MHI, Jeeva aims for capacity building of community leaders from rural/semi-rural districts in Karnataka who, in turn, can provide mental health support, facilitate links and referrals, and develop awareness on mental health through community existing networks and CBOs working on HIV/AIDS in Karnataka.

MHI partners with Samvada with their Baduku Centre for Livelihood Learning’s “Gender Development Practitioners Course with Counselling Skills and Mental Health Perspectives,” providing mental health care on campus and self-care modules to all Baduku students. The course aims to equip students from marginalised backgrounds with the critical perspectives of feminist therapy, inculcating reflexivity and developing key skills of non-judgemental and empathetic listening, mediation, networking and referral, women’s mobilisation, sensitisation and advocacy for gender justice, while working with marginalised communities.

Project Ohana is designed by marginalised women leaders that aims to holistically address the unique stressors faced by Dalit, Adivasi, and women leaders from marginalised groups and to create a space for addressing their mental well-being through a three-month residential programme. The initiative will provide healthcare services (physical and mental), capacity-building (that is, writing workshops), and peer support opportunities for those in residence with the larger aim of these leaders sustaining their social justice work.

Mental Health Action Trust (MHAT) provides community-based and community-led mental health care models free of cost for economically marginalised individuals with severe mental health issues. Through their partnership with MHI, MHAT provides services to their 46 community partnerships across eight districts in Kerala, and for scaling up of 15 community-based programmes with the Adivasi communities and coastal fisherfolk in a few districts of Kerala. MHAT’s partnerships include government community health centres, various government departments as well as local NGOs working across sectors such as health and palliative care among other practices in their work.

Career Counselling and Life Skills for Adolescents and Young Adults from Vulnerable Communities

Helpline and Mental Health Awareness Project in Nagaland

Trans Community Drop-in Centre and Ongoing Community Support

Contact and Safety Planning Project (CASP): Suicide Prevention

Project Man Marziyaan works with youth from Gond and other Adivasi communities residing in urban spaces such as Bhopal, on their mental health, their understanding of the self and society, and in building peer support networks in bastis of Bhopal. The project aims to engage with Adivasi youth of all genders aged 15 and above through a 12-month youth programme. While facilitating direct counselling support to youth in these bastis and making referrals, the project also provides counselling skills for a few identified youths, who later on can go on to become peer counsellors.

Parcham is a community-based organisation working with Muslim adolescent girls in Mumbra and Mumbai. Their flagship program is using sports for the empowerment of girls and to foster fraternity and solidarity amongst young women across different religions. They also work on rights education and agency building of marginalised young women to access public spaces, recreation and equal representation. MHI is partnering with Parcham to offer Career Counselling Life skills for young Muslim women.

The Listening Station project operates a helpline staffed by academically trained counsellors, where service users can avail mental health support free of cost. The helpline has a call-back facility for service users to follow up. In order to facilitate greater access to mental health services for communities in Nagaland, the Listening Station team aims to begin community outreach work with key stakeholders and influencers, such as colleges, community spaces, and churches so that they can provide awareness and education, as well as facilitate discussions on mental health in local and vernacular languages.

A Kolkata-based trans-activists-led organisation- BDS Samabhabona was launched by trans and queer activists, comprised of Dalit, working class persons, sex workers, and migrant workers. Samabhabona is partnering with MHI to support a drop-in centre/ community space in Kolkata, which will facilitate mental health support and crisis intervention for around 150 trans persons. In tandem with Samabhabona’s feminist, intersectoral, and rights-based approach, this project will support elderly and homeless trans persons, while also facilitating community advocacy activities such as sensitisation workshops, consultations, and meetings that advocate for legal rights, wellbeing of trans sex workers, trans labour unions, leadership training, livelihoods, and peer support as well as art activism.

Contact and Safety Planning Project (CASP): Suicide Prevention

Project SPEAK: A Suicide Postvention Initiative

Studying Mental Health Capabilities in Kashmir

Partnering with MHI, CMHLP’s Contact and Safety Planning (CASP) project will be implemented in Balod and Rajnandgaon districts of Chhattisgarh. With an aim to reduce repeat suicide attempts among individuals, the project seeks to get the CASP intervention delivered through capacity-building of emergency ward nurses and community health officers (CHOs). Post discharge from district and sub-district hospitals, trained CHOs follow-up with participants and their families at regular intervals. The study will aim to identify the feasibility of implementing CASP in the public health systems across all districts in the state.

Spearheaded by women survivors of suicide loss themselves, Project SPEAK is a suicide post-vention pilot initiative by MSCTRF in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu—that focusses on providing support to women survivors of suicide loss through support groups, local outreach to suicide survivors, peer-led support groups for survivors (online and in-person), immediate response by trained volunteers in the event of a suicide death in the communities and sensitisation and training programmes on suicide and suicide loss for various stakeholders such as mental health professionals, police, media, and teachers among others.

Project Sahyog is an independent research study led by a group of Kashmiri researchers, mental health sector professionals, and lawyers on mapping the availability and accessibility of rights-based mental health services in the Valley. Keeping the backdrop of marginalisation and conflict in Kashmir, the project will be a 1-year collaborative study across mental health stakeholders in Kashmir such as practitioners, service providers, policy-makers, and community members to document the state of public and private mental healthcare systems in Kashmir through a mapping of service providers, and develop a framework on rights-based mental health work in Kashmir, including context-specific indicators for rights-based care.