COVER STORY
As I think of freedom and mental health, I hope all forms of stifling are challenged, and unjust barriers are broken.
Outlook Magazine - Every Day I Pray for Love - 21 August 2025 Issue on Mental Health
This Independence Day, Outlook India asks: can we imagine a nation where freedom includes freedom from the stigma of mental illness? In India, to speak of mental health is to invite silence, judgment or worse-abandonment. For many in India, mental health care doesn’t begin in clinics—but with superstition, isolation, or mistreatment. When poverty and caste determine a person’s place in society, illness is not just an affliction; it's also shame. In collaboration with the Chennai-based NGO, The Banyan, Outlook's Independence Day Special Issue is on first hand experiences, reports, columns from experts, and ground reports from our reporters on mental health issues. Dr. Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar, the co-founders of ‘The Banyan', Dr. Sanjeev Jain, and Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan have guest-edited the issue along with Ms. Chinki Sinha, Editor of Outlook.
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Many people have asked me why I decided to curate an issue on mental health. I think the answer lies in the memory. An old, painful one, but I wanted to be free to confront it on the page and to write a letter to my dead grandfather, who once was a caregiver to his youngest son, who suffered with schizophrenia. My Uncle was a brilliant doctor and a gentle person. He wasn’t perfect, but he was family.
Mental well-being is rooted in the complex relationship between society and the individual. Laws and policies alone cannot fix it
The courts, including the Supreme Court of India, have stepped in on multiple occasions, flagging violations of the Mental Health Act.
At The Banyan's Home Again facility in Chennai, dignity, friendship and hope replace the stigma of being mentally unwell.
In quiet seaside town Ratnagiri, six women share a home built brick by brick from understanding. Here at The Banyan’s Home Again, healing is a promise, not a miracle.
Shahnaz lost everything: her home, her memory, her place in the world. At The Banyan, Ratnagiri, she began the long journey back to herself, and to her children.
Saraswathi Premkumar has been living at The Banyan’s Chennai facility for the past ten years. She has been through a lot but love for her father keeps her going.
Premavathi, who lives at The Banyan’s Chennai facility, earned the charming nickname as she was often seen cycling around the city.
Kamalini and Kajal now live at The Banyan’s Ratnagiri facility, where community, care and a cat named Sundari help them heal from their trauma.
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Many people have asked me why I decided to curate an issue on mental health. I think the answer lies in the memory. An old, painful one, but I wanted to be free to confront it on the page and to write a letter to my dead grandfather, who once was a caregiver to his youngest son, who suffered with schizophrenia. My Uncle was a brilliant doctor and a gentle person. He wasn’t perfect, but he was family.
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Mental well-being is rooted in the complex relationship between society and the individual. Laws and policies alone cannot fix it
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The courts, including the Supreme Court of India, have stepped in on multiple occasions, flagging violations of the Mental Health Act.
-
At The Banyan's Home Again facility in Chennai, dignity, friendship and hope replace the stigma of being mentally unwell.
-
In quiet seaside town Ratnagiri, six women share a home built brick by brick from understanding. Here at The Banyan’s Home Again, healing is a promise, not a miracle.
-
Shahnaz lost everything: her home, her memory, her place in the world. At The Banyan, Ratnagiri, she began the long journey back to herself, and to her children.
-
Saraswathi Premkumar has been living at The Banyan’s Chennai facility for the past ten years. She has been through a lot but love for her father keeps her going.
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Premavathi, who lives at The Banyan’s Chennai facility, earned the charming nickname as she was often seen cycling around the city.
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Kamalini and Kajal now live at The Banyan’s Ratnagiri facility, where community, care and a cat named Sundari help them heal from their trauma.
OTHER STORIES
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Since joining The Banyan's Home Again project a few months ago, Sameer has been uplifting spirits at the Ratnagiri facility with his melodious singing.
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After years of moving between facilities and shrines, Sonal finally found a home at Ratnagiri’s Home Again facility. She opens up about her deep longing for family, love and belonging.
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Sunil was depressed, his wife battled schizophrenia; they lived on the streets in Chennai, then lost their daughter. Now at The Banyan’s Chennai facility, he's finally doing better.
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Do you believe in miracles? Because I do.
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Srividya, who grew up in the Kolar Gold Fields, sheds a life of abuse, strives to overcome her pain every day.
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The suicide crisis among the young and older adult populations needs specific targeted interventions.
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From Varanasi’s funeral pyres to Delhi’s sewers, India’s caste system creates hazardous working conditions for the country’s most marginalised communities, leaving them with psychological and physical scars
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In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, genuine efforts are being made under the District Mental Health Programme to help people with mental illnesses. However, a large section of disadvantaged society is still slipping through the cracks
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Which moments—those fleeting, profound fragments of our existence—will linger and haunt us in our final breaths?
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Bakhshy, 83, has been the primary caretaker for his 53-year-old schizophrenic daughter.
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Sandhu, 52, has been taking care of his schizophrenic mother since he was young.
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Both Ratna and her daughter Tanya learned early that Ratna's brother Sushil required more care than them.
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My father suffered from a combine of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder for more than four decades. In all this time, our family battled social ostracisation, structural stigma and the healthcare system’s inability to deal with mental illnesses effectively.
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The paradox at the intersection of work and mental health is that our world today exemplifies working conditions that undermine people’s psychological wellbeing, while simultaneously excluding millions of people with psychosocial disabilities from occupational roles.
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Instead of reforming mental hospitals, India is shutting them down
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India's mental health policy must go beyond treatment, prioritising prevention, awareness and support at every level.
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Although the how, where and when to treat mental illness are now better understood in India, the ‘why’ continues to be obscure.
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Desperate to leave, inmates of the century-old mental health facility near Ranchi open our eyes to the world of those deemed too 'ill' to live with others in society.
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Covering conflict is dangerous, but it becomes even more hazardous for journalists when the conflict zone happens to be their motherland. A personal account.
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Balancing financial responsibilities and academic pressures while adapting to unfamiliar social customs placed a heavy strain on Saira’s mental health.
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Mental health needs to be reframed as a human right—especially for women in India who have been silenced, stretched thin, or made to feel small.
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The prevalence of conversion therapy stems from the ingrained stigma around queerness in the society, leading to the pathologisation of sexual orientation as a mental illness.
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It’s been seven years since the CBI’s psychological autopsy ruled that the Burari deaths were motivated by shared psychosis. Yet the case continues to be viewed through the lens of ‘bizarre’
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Is India prepared to meet the needs of its ageing population?
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Snippets from a civil servant’s experience—pre- and post-retirement
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India’s rapid urbanisation and digital saturation amplify the paradox of people hyper-connected online but isolated in their real-life contexts of proximity without intimacy.
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A young girl remembers her mother's depressive moods and looks beyond them
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Meena Kandasamy examines what a woman's sacrifices to society
