India Delegation speaks on Mental Health at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2022

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Updated: November 02, 2022 10:46 IST

Brussels [Belgium]/ New Delhi [India]November 2 (ANI/BusinessWire India): The Policy Makers Forum for Mental health, India, led a panel discussion at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting on October 25, 2022 in Brussels, to discuss the challenges around mental health, which especially affect the most vulnerable in India. The debate was organized in collaboration with Grand Challenges Canada and ETI Services to support the launch of an innovative new youth-focused mindset initiative.
India has witnessed an increase in youth suicides during the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasing pressures on mental health are debilitating and require a multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary approach to drive care towards a more holistic model of care and support. To address this, legislators, experts and people with lived experience have come together to identify the gaps in mental health care in India and how current structures can be modified to address them.
Dr. Dalbir Singh, Founder and Chairman, Policy Makers Forum for Mental health chaired the panel. He highlighted that “there are several dimensions to this social unrest and reiterated that there is a radical need for a paradigm shift in the existential biomedical approach, comprehensive and pragmatic government strategies, vibrant health literacy, engaged media and local communities, in collaboration with local governments & civil society, responsive corporate sector and innovative technologies as well as targeted interventions for the most vulnerable Aggressive advocacy by policymakers and elected representatives backed by strong political will play a vital role in promoting the level of discourse and awareness in addition to creating synergy and intersectoral coordination between various stakeholders.”
Bhubaneshwar Kalita, MP and Member, Policy Makers Forum for Mental health, in her speech she spoke about the burden of mental health problems that falls too heavily on women and girls. He explained: “There are huge accessibility crises, for female populations, that plague all health care processes (in general), from diagnosis to treatment. This is exacerbated by information asymmetry that affects much more than women who are still struggling to educate themselves and claim their space in the most crucial aspects of public service delivery If existing institutions are strengthened and include mental health services in their purview, we can envision structural change looking to the future “.

Vincent Pala, also MP and member, Policy Makers Forum for Mental health, focused his responses on suicide among young people in India. He began by highlighting why it is necessary to rethink policies around mental health and how “family problems” and “illness”, and not unemployment or bankruptcy, are the main reasons for suicide in the 18-30 year old population. . years. She also addressed the issue that family spaces are not necessarily safe, as has been imagined for years, bringing to everyone’s attention that housewives accounted for more than half of all female suicide victims, and linking it to the increase in reported cases of violence against women. at home during COVID-19. Describing how suicides are perceived culturally in India, Pala had an interesting insight: “The stigma associated with suicide is linguistically governed by popular media and this, in most cases, leads to underreporting.”

Dr. Rajdeep Roy, MP and Member, Policy Makers Forum for Mental health as well as the Member of the Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, gave the context of the Mental healthCare Act, which came into force in 2017, suggesting that this was a watershed moment in the history of mental health services in India, as the nature of this law is very progressive in “initiating the establishment of a central authority and state, and by decriminalizing suicide and banning electroconvulsive therapy, the elements of confidentiality, quality medical care, and rehabilitation allow the act to become a precedent for other nations,” he added.

Dr. Shirshendu Mukherjee, Mission Director, BIRAC, India, stated, “The nation has praised the role of India’s biotech industry during COVID-19. It makes one see the need to avoid the physical distress caused in crisis to keep “the mental health of the population under control. What it disables are the risk factors that lead to anxiety and depression among people in the long term, and BIRAC looks forward to partnerships to make a difference and enhance innovations around mental health in India.”

Arjun Kapoor, Program Manager and Research Fellow at the Indian Law Society, emphasized the triadic relationship between legal rights, mental health services and field management. He talked about some of the important programs and partnerships that the Center for Mental health Law and Policy is engaging in India to ensure accessibility of mental health services at the grassroots level and also work on suicide prevention. He stated that “while some progress has been made in terms of policy and implementation in recent years, there is still a long way to go in terms of how mental health interventions are envisioned and delivered from the top. Stakeholders in the field, including both NGOs and the general public/beneficiaries, should be included in the scope of care whenever planning (both policy and implementation) takes place, to ensure that they come up with solutions themselves; universalizing policy at headquarters, voices from the fringes are often dismissed”.

Dr. Sukriti Chauhan, CEO of ETI Services, spoke about her experience working in mental health, particularly with adolescents. She started with how there are more complex and convoluted mental health illnesses than generic populations are aware of, and are also largely age-sensitive, even within the adolescent age group (10-19 years). “Since, while the usual measures of promotion, prevention and early detection can help mitigate the impending pandemic of mental health problems, it is also essential to have an (ongoing) dialogue between multiple stakeholders to talk about mental health. the help of doctors, public officials, civil society organizations, pressure groups, the media, schools, parents, and even adolescents themselves,” she added.
The session concluded with remarks from Dr. Dalbir Singh, Chairman, Policy Makers Forum for Mental health.
Released in 2021, The Policy Makers Forum for Mental health aims to bring together diverse stakeholders under one umbrella and seek the attention of policymakers from different political parties to develop an Action Plan and suggested recommendations for the formulation of a Concerted Strategy for suicide prevention. The Forum is guided by eminent domain experts and practitioners in creating the necessary evidence-based data.
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