We present here a more detailed description about our
work in the last year

Users of our community resource center at Kondhwa, Pune, would be happy to know that we have added a whole new range of books, reports, CDs, documentation materials, and other resources to our library and documentation center in the last year.

We have revived our idea of an “Oral Histories” program to our archive in the library and documentation center. In this activity, we invite people who are users or survivors of psychiatry, in India or elsewhere, to share their poems, diaries, campaign materials, litigation papers, photographs, newsletters, or stories with us.

We have re-visioned our AMH [Alternative Mental Health] program and have made it more comprehensive. This year we have collected various resources on nutrition, homeopathy, etc. to our library and we have conducted sessions on Reiki and Hypnotherapy.

We have felt the need to bring out advocacy materials in the local language (Marathi) in Maharashtra. To meet this end, we started a newsletter called Abhivyakti. Two issues of Abhivyakti were published in the last year from the resource center.

We have been awarded two grants that will consolidate our work and help us to grow over the next three years. One grant was made by Action Aid International- India, to support our work of advocacy, training and services in custodial institutions. Sir Dorabji Tata Trust has continued to support our work through another 3 year project grant. This will help us to strengthen our training, service and research activitites, other than supporting our resource center.

A project, “Enabling Environment for Mental Health in Gujarat” (2003-2005), supported by the Royal Netherlands Embassy, through a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, on behalf of the Government of Gujarat, was successfully completed. The project gave us a lot of new learnings in the area of research, trainings and advocacy. We had the opportunity to impact diverse forums in the mental health sector.

As outcomes of this project, we brought out two research study reports on “Stake holder perspectives and quality of client-provider relationships in Gujarat” and “Quality of mental health care within custodial institutions in Gujarat”. These studies helped us to highlight the very poor quality of client-provider relationship in the private sector and the public sector.

A collaboration with the Women’s Health Training and Advocacy Center, which is a part of the Women’s Study Center, MS University, Vadodara, led to the preparation of a study report on “Women and mental health”, based on 30 in-depth case studies of women who have used the mental health system.

The project also allowed us to experiment with curricula for the Gujarat judiciary in the area of law and mental health. 5 Trainings on “Law and Mental Health”, in collaboration with the Gujarat State Legal Services Authority, were completed. We trained legal officers at different levels of the judiciary.

Five Round Tables of multiple stakeholders on “Good Practices in Mental Health” were also conducted. This is the first time in India that a multi-stakeholder dialogue forum was set up to discuss suggestions for good clinical / service practices in mental health.

We also report the annual news from another research project, “Health and healing in western Maharashtra: The role of traditional healers in mental health service delivery”. A photo-exhibition on “Faith healing: Going beyond medicine” was conducted as a part of our advocacy activities in Pune, in the month of December 2005.

Professor Amita Dhanda, one of our Trustees, actively facilitated a study group discussion on the draft UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with support from Action Aid International – India office, New Delhi. We participated in four of the study group meetings in January, 2005, February, July, August and January 2006 preceding and following the fifth, the sixth and the seventh Ad Hoc Committee Meetings. A brief report is posted here. She attended the sixth and the seventh Ad Hoc Committee meetings this year as a part of the WNUSP. We made posters for the UN event, three of which can be freely downloaded from our site.

Bhargavi Davar was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship from Ashoka, Innovators of the Public, from April, 2005. Following this award, she collaborated with another Ashoka Fellow, Ms. Ratnaboli Ray of Anjali, Kolkatta, to organize a National Consultation on “Access to Justice of the Rights of Persons with Mental illness”. The event was supported by the Law For All Initiative of the Ashoka. A Charter of Rights was drafted at this meeting for discussion and feedback among all stakeholders in the mental health sector.

As a part of the Gujarat project, a 12 day training course on “Gender and Mental Health” was completed. Another run of the program, GMH-III, was conducted in the month of January, 2006.

We have, in this year, brought out three issues of aaina. Recently, in collaboration with Majlis, a women’s legal aid and training center in Mumbai, we published a booklet, “Healing from Violence: A counsellor’s manual”. Our training booklet, “Women and mental health” was translated into Gujarati. We have brought out a complete set of Human Rights posters as well as a planner as a part of our advocacy work against institutional rights violations.

We started services for demonstrating the advocacy principles that we espouse as an organization. We have strengthened our service component in the last year.

Seher finished one year of work at the center as well as at the community. We partnered with “Snehdeep”, a development NGO, where we trained their Community Health Workers in mental health. An advanced training for the supervisors was conducted through the rest of the year. A report of Seher’s work and activities so far is also found in our website.

Trainings of various government officers have also happened through Seher. We have in this year, conducted mental health and advocacy trainings for family court counsellors of Maharashtra, beggars’ home officers, and jail officers in Maharashtra.

We have recently started an office in Mumbai with a view to expanding our services. Over the year, we have also established our intervention in the beggars’ home and have taken an active role in negotiating with the government about the Bombay Prevention of Beggary Act.

We have started a state level, people’s campaign in mental health, involving all activists in the mental health and related sectors, called Jan Manasik Arogya Abhiyan. We report here on the meetings held so far and our plans for the future.

We have worked on “people development” by collaborating with the World Center for Creative Learning, Pune. A role directory was developed and presentations were made before the organization and the Board of Trustees on our Human Resources vision and organizational structure.

Bhargavi V Davar
Director, CAMH, 7th March 2006, Pune