Voices

Countries Set to Prioritise Well-Being over GDP to Abate Climate Change, but Intersectional Well-Being Is Missing in Climate Spaces

What would developing a truly intersectional, equity-based lens in climate solutions look like?

A statement by Mariwala Health Initiative

The loss of thousands of lives, including children, in Gaza is a collective failure of humanity.

A Call for Disability-Inclusive Climate Action in India and Globally

We, People with Disabilities and Organisations of Persons with Disabilities in India, call upon a...

The Intersection of Climate Justice and Mental Health for Queer-Trans Persons

Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges of our time. It directly and indirectly af...

Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP) Residential Program - Kerala State, Oct-Nov 2023

Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI) started the Queer-Affirmative Counselling Practice Course in Jan...

Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP) In-Person Course Bangalore, May 2023

Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI) started the Queer-Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP) Course...

Working for Disabled People’s Organisation of Bhutan

Impact of Climate Change on PwDs. This piece is in the Dzongkha language of Bhutan.

Songs of the Forest

Exploring Climate Justice through the Lens of Global Economy, Development and Capitalism

Climate Change at the cost of my life

Does Anyone Care? This piece is in the Dari language of Afghanistan.

सामूहिक आघात से साझे संघर्ष तक पश्चिमी हिमालय में स्थित हिमाचल के किन्नौर ज़िले में युवाओं का अस्तित्व के लिए संघर्ष

हिमाचल के उच्च हिमालयी क्षेत्र में स्थित किन्नौर जन जातीय ज़िला पिछले कुछ वर्षों में आपदाओं का घर बन गया...

QACP in-person courses are back in 2023!

Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI) started QACP in January 2019 with 22 participants and within a y...

Demystifying Suicide Prevention

A special series in association with Sanity by Tanmoy dedicated to suicide prevention, which will...

6-Day Course on Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice

QACP has received an overwhelming response in the last two years and 350+ MHPs have been trained ...

Addressing Inequalities: Structural Competency and Collective Action in Mental Health

Dismantling systems of power

All the Better to Suffer the Status Quo with, My Dear

Socio-emotional learning (SEL): mental healthcare, or behaviour modification programmes?

The “Othering” of the Queer Mental Health Professional

Queer dystopias in mental health workplaces

Freeing Today’s Class(room) from Caste

Looking at how caste hierarchies and norms in educational spaces affect mental health knowledge p...

Being Muslim at the Workplace: Implications for Mental Health

The structural violence that Indian Muslims experience, as a significant area of inquiry.

Children in Child-Care Institutions: The adverse impact of marginalization and institutionalization on children’s mental health

Marginalized children, being at greater risk of adverse mental health, are more likely to be inst...

Making the invisible visible

The disabled constitute the largest minority in the world. Given the stigma surrounding disabilit...

‘Chinta, Tension, Bhoi’: Expressions of distress in fishing communities

In writing this, I kept going back to the image of a dinner table at a local restaurant in a smal...

Rationing – The Legitimacy Problem in Mental Healthcare: Reflections from Kashmir

The rationing of mental healthcare is an outcome of both, the theory of healthcare rationing, and...

Centering survivors’ short-term and long-term needs

Inside the Criminal Justice system: foregrounding survivors and victims of serious crimes.

Mental Healthcare is Incomplete without the Body

Drawing attention to the most proximal, but overlooked, system in mental healthcare: The body

Justice and Recovery: A Forced Binary

The schism between justice and mental healthcare for survivors of trafficking violence in India

Creating a Culture of Embodied Activism for Mental Health Professionals

Exploring how we can unlock the wisdom of our bodies to guide and sustain us in bringing advocacy...

Psychosocial Support for the Riot-Affected: Factoring in Financial Security

A critique of the biomedical model of post-riot counselling services as being reductive, in divor...

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE | APRIL- JUNE, 2021

We're a grant-making and advocacy agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particu...

6-Day Course on Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice

QACP has received an overwhelming response in the last two years and 200+ MHPs have been trained ...

Exercising accountability as a funder

As a funding agency, MHI had to respond urgently and with responsibility to the unprecedented COV...

Changing conversations on mental health

While COVID-19 is considered to be a humanitarian crisis and multiplied the number of conversatio...

Creating innovative programs to strengthen the MH ecosystem

Through the year, we launched initiatives targeting specific groups such as youth, entrepreneurs,...

Guiding and growing MHI’s path to the future

In February 2020, we got together with all our team members and advisory board members to discuss...

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE | OCT- DEC, 2020

We're a funding agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particular focus on makin...

6- day Certificate Course on Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP) Online

QACP has received an overwhelming response in the last two years and 150 MHPs have been trained a...

Long form: Clinical Legacies and Counter-Narratives

Clinical Legacies and Counter-Narratives

The fields of knowledge associated with mental health have come under scrutiny for human rights ...

Therapy as a Tool in Dismantling Oppression

Working with the political in the personal in clinical practice Can therapy align with activism ...

The Neoliberal Project: Mental Health & Marginality in India

Neoliberalism has aided in the dubious re-organization of the subjective, psychological self

Queer Possibilities

The changing landscape of therapeutic practice with queer clients

Resilient Practices for Mental Health in Rural and Urban Uttarakhand

Building on community resources in crisis and disaster This article outlines key practices for s...

The Atmiyata Story

Centering community as a resource

‘I Get You’

Strengthening Peer Counseling within the Queer Community

Rebuilding Therapeutic Spaces

Unlearning old frameworks: Towards a less one-sided practitioner-client relationship

Relocating Mental Health Conversations to Native Queer Subcultures in India

The Hijra community as a site and source of care This article attempts a culture-sensitive conv...

What Kind of Interventions Do We Need Now?

Poetry and healing: beyond clinical options This is an essay on how it is imperative, especially...

Making Your Days Matter, to the Very End

Supporting journeys through home-based care

'Knife of Insight'

Experiences of toxic work cultures and the process of recovery

An Invisible Intersection: Mental Healthcare for the Deaf Community

A realization crucial to building a Deafinclusive society is that living in a nonsigning world ca...

Creating Safe Spaces within Legal Settings

A model for individual, couple and familial counseling for matrimonial litigation

Mental Health Helplines

Potential for subversion

Mental Stress: The Toiling Class in Slums

How customs and traditions, songs and rituals play a role

Teachers as Agents of Change

Tealeaf: Mansik Swastha teachers renegotiate traditional roles and relationships as they become d...

A Home Away from Home

Creating a space of care to provide mental health support for children, adolescents and their fam...

An Approach to Dance Movement Therapy (DMT)

A mental health intervention that moves beyond the clinical paradigm

Communities of Practice and Women’s Mental Health

Looking beyond geographically defined community as supports

Articulating Sexuality from the Margins

Seeding Wellbeing in Drought- Prone Regions

A psychosocial approach to working with distraught farming communities

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE  |  JULY - SEPT, 2020

We're a funding agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particular focus on makin...

Responding to COVID as a Mental Health Funding Organization

Coronavirus is not just a public health issue but also an issue of livelihoods, food, security, ...

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE  |  APRIL - JUNE, 2020

We're a funding agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particular focus on makin...

Resources for LGBTQI community during COVID

The pandemic has a disproportionate impact on persons and communities marginalised by gender and ...

How our approach has shaped the initiatives that we’ve invested in this year (2019-2020)

At MHI we believe in a psychosocial approach to mental health – that there are critical social de...

We fund initiatives that are user-centered, and employ a human rights-based approach

At the onset we knew that MHI would employ an intersectional and intersectoral approach to funding.

Challenging existing pathological representations of LGBTQIA+ lives & countering historical violence & discrimination, in mental health practice

The edifice of mental health and psychiatry in India has been responsible for pathologizing non-n...

Collaborating with others to bridge the mental health care gap

If we want to influence social change, we must work in tandem with others. At MHI, we support and...

Working with the Government to bolster mental health care services

MHI signs an MoU for a Technical Support Unit that will support the Government of Bihar in streng...

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE | OCT - DEC, 2019

We're a funding agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particular focus on makin...

Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice, Bombay

6 Day Course on Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice (QACP)

Young Indians Speak About Mental Health

Insights gained from stories shared online by youth.

#BridgeThe CareGap

An advocacy-based campaign to ensure the implementation of India’s Mental Health Care Act. Bridge...

Safeguarding Client and Counselor

Ethical dilemmas in psychotherapy in India. Exploring the foundations for ethical practice.

The Need for a Rights-Based Lens in Education

An enquiry into challenging existing pathological representations of LGBTQIA+ lives, and systemic...

Mental Health & Criminal Law

A critique of the excessively narrow approach of the law that takes into account only those menta...

Where Social Justice Meets Mental Health

A discussion on social justice, collective mental health and the impact of social hierarchies of ...

MHI QUARTERLY UPDATE | JULY - SEPT, 2019

We're a funding agency for innovative mental health initiatives, with a particular focus on makin...

The Invisible Crisis

Sexism, twin taboos & mental Health oppression

Unrecognized and Unaddressed

Exploring the mental health gap for persons with physical and/or sensory disabilities

Interrogating the Cut + Paste of ‘Recovery’

This article challenges received wisdom on existing concepts of ‘recovery’ from mental suffering ...

I Walk the Line

This article examines data from a research study that explored treatment experiences of users, an...

Pathways to Mental Health

Challenging the existing discourse around the ‘treatment gap’ that invisibilises the psycho-socia...

ReFrame: Editor's Note

An Editor's Note on ReFrame, a journal by the Mariwala Health Initiative that challenges existing...

Does every Citizen have the Right to Vote?

On voting as an issue of development, social justice, and human rights—an instrument by which we ...

Enhancing Livelihoods

Fostering social inclusion through setting up robust social, economic and livelihoods support sys...

The ideal of ‘Recovery’

A critique of the conventional approach to  ‘care’ views persons with mental health that diagnose...

Queering Mental Health Practice

QACP interrogates and counters dominant approaches to sexuality in the mental health sector. It i...

Fostering Resilience in the Wake of Disasters

Despite evidence of the impact that disasters have on mental health, disaster response approaches...

Peer Support Practice

Peer support is based on support due to similar lived experiences. MHI recently launched a module...

Mental Health Care Reaches Remote Villages in Yamuna Valley

MHI partner Burans recently celebrated the launch of yet another community mental health program ...

Arts Based Therapy Course By Bapu Trust: Healing Through Art Forms

“Art is the meeting ground of the world inside and the world outside.” Elinor Ulman

Grief Counselling for Pet Parents

Many cultures do not recognise the connection between pets and their caregivers and how devastati...

MHI's Quarterly Newsletter

Read about our latest partners, innovative projects we've been funding and upcoming events throug...

ReFrame 2019: Call for Submissions

ReFrame, a journal by the Mariwala Health Initiative is a platform to challenge existing norms an...

Professional Solidarity : What Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice Means To Me As A Mental Health Practitioner

I’m a 25-year-old therapist with a background in Clinical Psychology. I have had roughly about 3 ...

Bridge the Care Gap Campaign

Despite the high incidence of mental health problems, the focus of the State has been centered on...