Three Decades of a Journey Towards Mental Health for All: The Story of IPH

The chapter outlines the journey of a social enterprise called Institute for Psychological Health, situated in the state of Maharashtra, India. The goal of the Institute is to work in the field of Mental Health, responding to the needs of the community and focusing on disability, distress and development through various ongoing activities that build awareness about mental health and psychological well-being, promote inclusion and reduce mental illness stigma. The story of IPH covers the beginning of IPH in March 1990, with no place to call its own, and a handful of like-minded mental health professionals spearheading a movement to promote well-being in the community of Thane, a township on the border of Mumbai city. The only association the city had with mental health or illness so far was the location of a Regional Hospital for long-stay psychiatric patients in its midst, ensuring nothing but stigma and fear associated with mental illness in residents’ minds. IPH created a totally different vibe, one of easy footfalls, a welcoming atmosphere, and plenty of activities for young and old alike. It has since grown from one city to three, Thane, Pune and Nasik, from one venue in the city to four sites in the city of Thane and one each in the other two cities. This has been possible due to a vision beyond psychiatry seen as psychopharmacology, using a team approach towards positive mental health, and stigma reduction. A vision beyond surviving on donations or state funding, by adopting self-sustenance and backward integration to develop in-house services. The Institute serves at three levels today, helping to assist disability through a core spirit of inclusion, addressing client distress through professionally run services at all its sites, often at very low cost for those who cannot pay, and ensuring development for all those who are striving towards higher goals and self-improvement. Multiple support groups for patients as well as caregivers, all of them run free of charge for years, serve to meet the first goal; IPH projects focusing on activity centres for chronic ailments like schizophrenia will be described at length. Teamwork marks IPH efforts to manage client distress, with a strong team of over a hundred professionals: psychologists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, special educators, and career guidance professionals. Additionally, a strong workforce of community volunteers carries on all institutional activities ably and well. The chapter highlights various unique practices at IPH, tying them to their basis in psychological science. It dwells on important lessons learned in the 32-year journey; it marks off challenge areas where much work is still needed, and the changes achieved along the way. It also offers blueprints to other like-minded organizations, for developing inclusive attitudes, use of books and articles in the local language to promote awareness, and harnessing the wide reach of social media. The aim of the chapter is to add to the documentation of existing community mental health efforts in India, and also to point fledgling organizations in the right direction, cautioning them to learn through earlier mistakes made, and experiments that turned out to be successful. Possible negative aspects that hinder the process of institution building could also be a takeaway from the chapter. Or else it may motivate like-minded professionals to build something like IPH in their own vicinity.