Engage

Strengthening Ecosystems

This year saw two crucial milestones for our Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP) training programme. First, MHI conducted its initial organisational QACP session with 38 participants from 10 organisations in August 2022. The QACP programme has been designed with the primary purpose of increasing access to affordable therapeutic services for persons from the LGBTQI+ community seeking mental healthcare. MHI engages in the organisational QACP programme with the trust that the participating institutions will observe ethics of practice and care across their work. Second, we concluded the first international batch of QACP for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa through online classes with participants from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Kenya in October 2022. Since 2019, QACP has trained over 650 mental health professionals.

In collaboration with the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) student cell at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, MHI conducted a capacity-building session with students in July 2022 to help them mentor the incoming batch of SC/ST students with the aim of providing support and improving their mental well-being. We also worked with them to create a code of conduct and set up referrals for the mentors to access.

MHI partnered with Kislay – a Delhi-based labour union – to implement a unique project aimed at building the mental health and psychosocial support capacities of Kislay’s response teams in September 2022. The organisation primarily works with domestic workers and construction workers facing structural oppressions, such as urban poverty, gender discrimination, caste-based discrimination, and lack of labour rights, which lead to mental health concerns connected to domestic violence, child sexual abuse, substance abuse, and trauma.

Suicide Prevention

We launched the Suicide Prevention Action training programme in April 2022. It has been designed for social workers and employees of community-based organisations, with the aim of strengthening the service delivery ecosystem as well as enabling the provision of accessible and quality care and support. The programme is currently conducted in English and Hindi.

MHI held a roundtable discussion in August 2022 in New Delhi to advocate for enacting a national suicide prevention policy and discussed strategies for addressing the high rates of suicide among youth. Our advocacy efforts extended to extensive media coverage on suicide prevention with us authoring several articles in mainstream publications as well as engaging in a dedicated content campaign with ‘Sanity by Tanmoy’, an independent journalism platform on global mental health, on suicide prevention lessons from the Global South. These efforts led to the Indian government launching the first National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in November 2022.

Immediately after the release of the NSPS, we held a ‘National Consultation on Prioritising Suicide Prevention for Youth in India’ with young persons and in collaboration with the Departments of Health, Education, and Youth Affairs in February 2023 to understand from the various ministries on how they would work on the agenda of the NSPS.

MHI supported the Integrated Holistic Health Working Group as part of the Civil 20 (C20) Engagement Group under G20 during India’s presidency in 2023. We took the lead in advocating for mental health and suicide prevention during these conferences. As a result of MHI’s efforts, both these issues have been included in the overall health objectives recommended to the G20 nations for the first time since the inception of the forum. In addition, MHI also sponsored an international conference as part of the Disability, Equity, Justice Working Group for C20 to advance disability equity and disability inclusion within the G20 leaders’ commitments, thereby furthering the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind.

Conferences Funded

In November 2022, MHI supported MH360° – the Red Door Project’s annual flagship event on empowering individuals to explore their emotional distress and make informed choices on how they want to heal, with a firm understanding of societal factors and structural forces that impact their lives. The festival was a mix of conversations, talks, workshops, and public participation events, with a special focus on marginalised voices.

MHI supported the Dance Movement Therapy Summit for Change organised by Kolkata Sanved in January 2023. The event brought together multiple stakeholders – such as Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) and Creative Art Therapy (CAT) practitioners; professionals from the fields of public health, mental health, education, and social development; civil society organisations; government officials; academicians; and donor organisations – to explore the scope of DMT and CAT practice in India and work towards their expansion.

MHI funded the 7th National Conference of the World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation – Indian Chapter on the theme ‘Promoting Rights and Recovery in Mental Health’ organised by Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, Assam in March 2023. The event, attended by mental health professionals, academics, and doctors managing community-based initiatives, focused on centring lived experiences, user agency, a rights-based approach, informed consent, community-based rehabilitation, de-institutionalisation, and psychosocial referrals and linkages.