Train community peers as frontline mental-health workers: Here our programs offer integrated care, offered close to home, using resources within communities. The goal? Address stigma and more importantly ensure access to adequate services.
Issue: Youth Mental health is ubiquitous, stigmatized, under-diagnosed, under-treated & under- resourced. All this is magnified in poor neighborhoods.
Our Approach to a potential solution: Piggyback on existing social programs that are already accepted and respected in the community! We partner with folks running such programs (& with top mental health experts) to train peers in the community to be frontline mental health and wellbeing helpers. These trained peers will facilitate mental-illness literacy, patient-identification, frontline support, Further, in case of more severe disease, the program provides a conduit to access public-health resources.
Here are some examples of our programs in this category:
Our partnership with PANI offers evidenced-based mental healthcare for young people in a poor rural district. The 2-part program trains ‘buddies’ (picked from the community) to i) help screen & assist those with moderate depression/anxiety while ii) linking those with severe disease to Government services.
About our partner and our role: PANI is one of India’s better known social organizations, working in several northern states of India. PANI’s well-established existing program in the poorest districts of Eastern UP empowers adolescent girls, earning PANI workers credibility and respect in the community.
Our partnership will use PANI’s existing flagship program in three UP districts as a base. To this base we jointly layer mental-health assistance of the kind described above. More information on PANI: View More https://paniindia.in/#:~:text=People%E2%80%99s%20Action%20for%20National%20Integration%20%E2%80%93%20%E2%80%98PANI%E2 %80%99%2C%20is,was%20founded%20in%201986%20and%20registered%20in%201989.
IF has partnered with The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) to layer community mental health on AKF’s existing initiatives unrelated to mental health. Objectives match those of PANI, but for many more types of mental illness.
About our partner: AKF’s ‘Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative’ has operated in the Nizamuddin Basti (Delhi) since 2007. Starting with restoration of significant monuments, the renewal initiative has morphed into many meaningful initiatives involving community health, education, livelihoods, sanitation and hygiene, a terrific infrastructure to piggyback on! For more on AKF’s Nizamuddin work, see https://www.nizamuddinrenewal.org/
The Need: Marginalized rural communities lack timely access to mental health care, given the shortage of doctors, high cost, and stigma.
Our intervention: IF has partnered with Basic Health Services (BHS) Trust, offering mental health
care in existing primary care centers. A key element is the innovative Nurse-led primary care services
called Amrit clinics. The program addresses the 3 issues of access, early diagnosis/treatment, and cost
while also helping reduce the stigma of mental illness. The program operates in marginalized rural and
tribal communities in Southern Rajasthan. Read more about BHS’s work at
https://bhs.org.in/#:~:text=Basic%20HealthCare%20Services%20%28BHS%29%20Basic%20Health%2
0Services%20%28BHS%29,network%20of%20responsive%20primary%20healthcare%20and%20nutrit
ion%20services.
The Need: for scaled mental health and wellbeing services is critical but sorely lacking and underfunded. DMHP is the Indian Government’s flagship program on mental health.
Our intervention: IF has partnered with Gramin Adivasi Samaj Vikas Sansthan (GASVS) to build a community based mental health program in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra in the Nagpur district. This model program seeks to engage with communities and build effective care linkages within the public health system, meaningfully enhancing effectiveness and continuity. Read more above GASVS’s work at https://gasvs.org/.