Mental health is finally part of the national
conversation, but how we respond to it is still evolving. India is home to
nearly ⅓ of the global numbers for depression, suicide, and addiction. Too
often and for most people in India; mental healthcare remains inaccessible,
fragmented, urban-centric, or narrowly biomedical in approach. What’s missing
is an ecosystem that can connect diverse stakeholders, build collective
capacity, and embed mental healthcare into the everyday realities of people.
Perceiving this gap, the India Mental Health Alliance (IMHA) – a growing
national network of 215 member organisations – has emerged as a nation-wide
force, coming together to reimagine India’s mental health landscape.
Formed in 2023, IMHA is a first-of-its-kind
alliance that strengthens mental healthcare systems by building the networks,
capacity, and collaboration needed for high quality collective impact. In its
first year, it has brought together organisations across India around a shared
purpose – from grassroots mental health organisations to lived experience &
caregiver collectives, to cross-sectoral non profit organisations, to
philanthropic and institutional funders, across 33 states and union
territories.
“What we’ve built with IMHA is a truly
collaborative and neutral nation-wide alliance with 215 cross-sectoral
organisations in its first year. The strength of the alliance lies in
connecting, convening and building collaborative capacities for mental health-
bringing together clinical and lived experience expertise; anchored in a shared
cross sectoral framework—one that sees mental health not just as a health
concern, but as a developmental issue. The fact that we’ve achieved this kind
of alignment – of purpose, principles, and perspectives – is itself a powerful
marker of what’s possible when collective vision drives lasting change for a
marginalized sector like mental health,” remarked Neha Kirpal, Founding
Cohort member, India Mental Health Alliance.
Our capacity building initiatives demonstrate
our commitment to moving beyond awareness to action — by building
sustainable, localised, and collaborative models of high quality care. From
high quality experiential training programmes for early career psychologists
and psychiatrists to specialised programmes on lived experience expertise,
suicide prevention etc., IMHA has focussed on systemically redesigning quality
of care practice, service design & organisational capabilities at a
national level. In its first year, IMHA has already demonstrated the
value of its capacity building initiatives. From psychotherapy video series
reaching over 2800 professionals across 100+ cities, to webinar-based practice
dialogues engaging nearly 950 professionals, to community-rooted workshops in
partnership with grassroots organisations – its programmes span a wide
spectrum. The Therapist’s Compass, for instance, supports early-career
psychologists with immersive training and mentorship, while its Knowledge
Centre hosts over 315 multilingual resources, including tools, research, and
field-based practice guides.
The Alliance’s intersectoral orientation,
connecting mental health with climate, gender, education and livelihoods
ensures that care is not isolated, but embedded into the everyday systems that
shape our daily lives. Karan Malik, the Executive Director, reasserts this
vision, “People think of mental health care as a very siloed,
hierarchical, bio medical issue and not a community based developmental
approach. With IMHA, the idea was to bring in member organisations from across
sectors – livelihoods, education, gender, climate, and make visible how mental
health cuts across 7 Sustainable Development Goals. Mental health affects
outcomes in all these SDGs and is in turn impacted by them, so it must be looked
at as a cross-cutting, cross-sectoral issue. By helping them see these overlaps
and co-create knowledge, we’re starting to build a sense of shared ownership
towards a common purpose of building a responsive mental health ecosystem for
India.”
IMHA is not only building programmes and
partnerships, but also shaping a philanthropic cohort committed to long-term,
systemic investment in mental health. As Vasvi Bharat Ram, the founding trustee
aptly puts it, “Our idea is also to encourage others, like ourselves,
to come forward to support this space, because it’s still hugely underfunded.
But to make that possible, we in the mental health sector need to build better
ways of showing the needle is moving – through metrics, reporting, and shared
learning.. That’s our commitment to IMHA, not just to fund programmes, but to
support the system-building work. And we hope to work with other
philanthropists to grow a community of funders who see the value in investing
in collective care models & alliances.”
As India’s mental health landscape begins to shift
from silos to systems thinking, IMHA stands at the forefront, not as a
single organisation, but as a living alliance of voices, values, and visions.
For mental health professionals, IMHA is a space to learn, lead and lean on
each other. For organisations, it offers tools, partnerships and the power of
scale. For funders and institutions, it is a platform that represents the
breadth, depth and diversity of India’s mental health movement – one that is
already building a legacy of high quality collaborative care centered around
those it seeks to serve.If you’re building, supporting, funding or reimagining
mental health in India – IMHA is where your work finds community.
Bringing people together to curate knowledge, facilitate
learning and catalyse collective impact for mental health
The
India Mental Health Alliance (IMHA) was founded in the latter part of 2023 to
build capacity and alliances for mental health in India by Vasvi and Ashish
Bharat Ram in partnership with mental health organisations Amaha and Children
First. Taking a cross-sectoral approach and centering lived experience
expertise; IMHA has developed and delivered several key capacity building
programmes and alliance initiatives in the course of a year, reaching 215
member organisations from across India, and 2000+ mental health professionals
in its first year alone. The First Annual Convening of IMHA will take place in
New Delhi in September 2025.
A
section 8 not for profit organisation, IMHA was set up by Founding Trustees
Vasvi and Ashish Bharat Ram together with mental health organisations Amaha and
Children First. In 2024, IMHA was joined by Manisha Dhawan as Strategic Donor
and Board Member.
Media contact
India Mental Health Alliance
Kaainaat Khan (Engagement and Communications
Lead)
+91 9810677643
kaainaat@indiamentalhealthalliance.org
