Support: Mac Arthur Fund for Leadership Development, 2001

The aims of the project were
	To set up a resource center on Women and Mental Health
	To build a structured & evaluated teaching course for NGOs on Women and Mental Health
	To implement the course on Women and Mental Health
	To bring out publications in the area of Reproductive health and mental health

Background to the project
Research and academic interest in the area of Women and Mental Health has been growing in the last 10-12 years among psychologists in the University departments, psychiatrists, practicing mental health professionals, women’s organizations, NGOs working at the grassroots level, health education institutions and even media and mass communication units. Women and Mental Health is now increasingly linked with the ‘development’ paradigm and is being discussed in the context of gender equality, empowerment and justice. However, at the community level, there is inadequate knowledge and understanding of mental health concepts or practices. Activists working with a ‘social equality’ framework have not been very comfortable with using psychological concepts that reduce a harsh social reality to individual problems. Neither are they able to reject it wholesale, because of the evident mental distress that they see in their community work. Psychiatrists and psychologists used to a universal model are unable to relate with the fact that gender, and women’s social position, do affect their mental health. Clinical work tends to be socially empty, while community work tends to be technically wanting. Even while there is overall consensus for enabling ‘community work in mental health’, everyday languages linking socio-cultural reality with mental health in a practical and relevant way for NGO use are needed. This proposal is an attempt to build Women and Mental Health into a discipline serving community work in mental health.

The project is relevant
	To contemporary community work in W&MH
	To the growing demand for practice and advocacy oriented mental health knowledge especially by NGOs
	To gender and development issues
Need for a resource center
The types of resource centers in mental health in India would include the following:
	Clinical Treatment Centers (eg. SCARF, Chennai)
	Counseling Centers (eg. Medical Mission Sisters, Pune)
	Specialized resource centers (Alzheimer’s disease, etc.)
	Medical college libraries (NIMHANS, Bangalore; AFMC, Pune; MIMH, Pune)
	University libraries with general or clinical psychology courses

However, none of these centers have any systematic build up of community or user oriented information base on Women and Mental Health. Nor do they specially serve communities. There was a need to develop a community resource center which would help the community, community activists and users (individual women, women’s collectives, activists, grassroots organizations, NGOs working in health / mental health, professionals, families, academics and scholars) get information on various aspects of Women and Mental health.

Need for a course on Women and Mental Health
The role of NGOs in the mental health sector has been negligible, unlike in the health sector. There is a need to bring forward NGOs into this sector in order to address the huge need for psychosocial interventions at the community level. NGOs can also act as grass roots social change agents in the restoration of the rights and dignity of persons with a psychiatric disability. However, there is a gap in knowledge among NGOs about mental health and mental ill health. The linkages that need to be made between development, health and mental health, can be strengthened by involving the NGOs. There was a felt need to develop a course for NGOs. A needs assessment study was conducted during the project period among various NGOs.

There was also a felt need to develop the course in order to cultivate “gender” sensitivity among the mental health professionals, such as community doctors, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, medical psychiatric social workers, medical or other social workers and counsellors.

It was also felt that a “reading culture” could be introduced to those who are mainly into interventions, as they have little time to pursue contemporary research topics in the mental health area.

Areas of Project impact
	Research Knowledge. The resource center will form an important contribution to the consolidation and growth of a critical mass of knowledge in the area of Women and Mental Health for use at the community level. The area of RH and MH is completely unexplored. Publications and collections of resources in this area will be of use to community interventions.
	Practical Knowledge. The course will enable the participants to use academic knowledge in their own health / mental health work or other intervention / activist work.
	Documentation. The publications will be of use to organizations and individuals working in this or allied fields, and also to the course participants.
	Curriculum in Women and Mental Health-- A comprehensive curriculum on Women and Mental Health is a unique and significant contribution.
	Methodology. Building up the Curriculum in this area is a first attempt in India. The methodology of the course is challenging and innovative.
	Discipline Building- The resource center, the curriculum and the publications together will contribute to laying the foundation stone towards building a discipline.

Outcomes
1. Women and mental health: A resource center

2. Publications: “Pregnancy, Childbirth and mental health: Evidence” and “Reproductive health and mental health: Abstracts”

3. “Gender and mental health: A residential program”