Regional Mental Hospital, Nagpur

The Tata Trusts have launched a district-wide community mental health programme that directly covers a population of five million people and provides mental health services at their doorstep. It aims to work with communities to build awareness on mental health, enable early detection of any mental illness, and provide comprehensive care closer to home.

The project covers 13 blocks in Nagpur district, and caters to a population of 5 million people. Door-to-door screenings are conducted by accredited social health activists (ASHAs) and other frontline workers, who identify suspected patients and create referral linkages for their diagnosis and treatment. The project also aims to reduce the stigma around mental illness and to promote awareness of mental health issues through community-led awareness events.

Areas of Operation: Nagpur

As part of the mental health initiatives in Maharashtra, in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra, the Tata Trusts set up a Technical Support Unit (TSU). This unit is envisaged as a centrally-located mechanism within the state, and aims to strengthen Maharashtra’s mental health programme with its varied components. The goal is also to facilitate the scale of experience, learning and knowledge generated by the Trusts to implement programmes in mental health care in collaboration with the government. This is the first-ever such TSU within a government system.

The TSU’s primary goal is to support the government in the development of a vibrant and integrated mental health care programme, and to increase access and quality of care through the development of an active technical support team that can help to strengthen such programmes. The TSU also aims to train human resource cadres for mental health care across the state, using a master trainer-based cascade model.

The support unit will create an integrated mental health and information system along with a dashboard that provides information about state programmes and decision making, and support the annual PIP development process. It will also help in the development of a functional system for the implementation of the Mental Healthcare Act of 2018.

The Trusts have partnered with the Government of Maharashtra for two ongoing mental health care programmes in the state. One is the institutional reform of the Regional Mental Hospital, Nagpur, to develop it into a centre for excellence. The other is to implement the district mental health programme for Nagpur district, and scaling it to be a replicable model.

The Trusts’ TSU will thus develop, implement and handhold standard guidelines for all components of mental health care service delivery in the state.

The Psychosocial Programme is one of the Tata Trusts’ initiatives to identify and alleviate mental health disorders. This initiative covers a total population of 68,000 in a cluster of 64 villages in Yavatmal district in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. The rate of farmers’ suicides is reported to be the highest in this region. The aim of the project is to provide distressed farmers and people with mental illness with better access to mental healthcare.

Key interventions

• Mental healthcare delivery system – to provide psychiatric consultation and medicines for persons identified with mental illness within the catchment area.
• Treatment and care – quality psychosocial support and counselling services for people with mental illness and their family members. The Trusts also initiated a helpline to provide counselling services.
• Addressing stigma and creating awareness of mental health – the Trusts engage proactively with community members, stakeholders, schools and colleges to raise awareness and promote positive mental health and well-being.
• Sensitisation and training – the Trusts provide a sensitisation programme for Krishidoots (village-level workers) on the provisions of mental healthcare, and train staff members on psychosocial care.

Areas of Operation: Yavatmal, Maharashtra