Aaina is a mental health advocacy newsletter. Advocacy demands critical, creative and transformative engagement with the state, policy makers, professionals, law, family and society at large.

Aaina is an opinion-making and opinion-leading newsletter, with a consistent message of user empowerment, good practice, policy, legal and social reform in the mental health care sector in India.

Aaina covers issues in community mental health, the role of NGOs in mental health, self-help and healing, the use of non-medical alternatives in mental health, human rights issues in mental health, institutional reform, ethical dilemmas, policy discussions, and the mental health needs of special groups (young people, women, the poor, sexual minorities, persons with a disability, etc.).

Aaina covers themes related to disability caused by psychiatric drug use, and long term institutionalization. It has a great interest in how much money pharma companies are making by pushing hazardous drugs onto poorly informed communities. News on this is always welcome.

Aaina provides a forum for users to express their problems and dialogues with the mental health service system, and their demands for change. It also addresses issues of social living for persons with a psychiatric disability, stigma, discrimination and deprivation of the right to life, especially of the poor and the homeless.

Aaina is circulated free to people concerned about these topics. It reaches out to over 300 people and organizations, libraries, and also to various policy makers and human rights watchdog agencies.

You are welcome to be a part of the aaina community…

Write for aaina…

	if you have revolutionary ideas for the betterment of lives of persons with a psychiatric disability.
	if you have ever advised, used or considered more humane alternatives in mental health treatment, than drugs or shock.
	if you have ever felt that your fellow peers and colleagues in the mental health professions are doing questionable practice.
	if you have been deeply traumatized by repeated hospitalizations, forced treatments, shock without anesthesia, intolerable side effects of psychiatric drugs, humiliation, loss of respect and dignity in any treatment setting

Write to:

The Editor
Aaina - A Bapu Trust initiative
Kapil Villa, Plot no. 9
Survey No. 50/4, Kondhwa Khurd
Pune-411048
Tel: 020-26837644/47
Email: wamhc@dataone.in; info@camhindia.org

All issues of aaina can be downloaded from this site. However, if you are interested in receiving print copies, contact us at info@camhindia.org with a request to be included in our mailing list.

You may contact the editors at: bvdavar@gmail.com.

If you wish to support aaina, please make a DD or a cheque in favour of "Bapu Trust for Research on Mind & Discourse, Pune" and send it to our mailing address. Donors' names will be regularly published in aaina along with the contribution made. Bapu Trust is able to provide 80G certification for claiming tax deduction.

Thank you for visiting aaina! Enjoy reading the back volumes at our site and be in touch.

Disclaimer: Aaina is a non-commercial / non-profit initiative of Bapu Trust. It is a privately circulated newsletter. However, the claims made and the opinions expressed in aaina are not necessarily that of the sponsoring organization, though a degree of resonance of views and opinions may exist.