Janamanas (translated roughly as the ‘mind of a collective’) Community Resource Hubs
Location
Janamanas was launched to de-institutionalize mental health services and make it accessible to ‘last mile communities’ demonstrate a model of community-based mental health care that is driven by resource poor women from within the community and or integrate mental health in the District Development Plan of the government of West Bengal.
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Anjali: A human rights based mental health Organization
Organization Website
Organization Phone
91 33 22903711/ +91 9831123981
Organization Address
P 23 Darga Road, Park Circus, Kolkata 700017, India
Organization Country
India
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name Your Project
Janamanas (translated roughly as the ‘mind of a collective’) Community Resource Hubs
Country your work focuses on
India
Describe Your Idea
Janamanas was launched to de-institutionalize mental health services and make it accessible to ‘last mile communities’ demonstrate a model of community-based mental health care that is driven by resource poor women from within the community and or integrate mental health in the District Development Plan of the government of West Bengal.
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
The idea is unique because Anjali works towards prevention end creating community models of primary mental health counseling, information and referral services to ensure that general psychosocial disorders do not accelerate into acute conditions due to lack of timely intervention.
Anjali partners with Urban Local Bodies to demonstrate de-institutionalized models of primary community mental health care and understanding, trains women from urban disadvantaged communities to work as barefoot mental health practitioners. These primary mental health workers run and manage community mental health hubs with direct supervision from Urban Local Bodies.
The Urban local Bodies provide the space and infrastructure for running the kiosks. It pays the barefoot mental health practitioners a monthly salary for running the kiosks. KMC officials invest time in being trained and coached by Anjali on
a) The complexities of positive community mental health and
b) The successful operationalization of community mental health kiosks.
Anjali firmly believes
• First identify leverage points and catalyze dynamic alliances between the state, the public and users of mental health services and ;
• Then facilitate these alliances to launch self-sustaining, local models of mental health care and empathy.
Local partnerships and models alone will
• Successfully bring down the cost of mental health care and
Correct the bewildering disproportion between the demand for, and supply of, informed mental health care in India
Again, we do not know of other models in the country that have successfully integrated the mental health agenda into the mandate of a municipality.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Janamanas and Community Mental Health Resource Hubs have secured the following impact:
• The social integration of persons with mental health problems in the municipality fabric - The Kiosk and its services have them a ‘voice’ and, the confidence to interact and negotiate with families, neighborhoods, local elected representatives, doctors, other caregivers and the government and judiciary at large.
• The inclusion of persons with mental health problems as a constituency with the right to access municipal services. In other word, the kiosk has integrated – for the first time- mental health services into the matrix of responsibilities of the local urban governance system.
• The creation of a large community volunteer base (rural and urban which engages with issues of positive mental health. Through trainings and awareness, they have shifted from stances of violence and fear to serving as care-givers and friends of persons with psychosocial disorders.
• The inclusion of mental health as an important health issue in the Draft Development Plan (DDP)
The 2 year outcomes of the Janamanas and Community Mental Health Resource hubs have been:
• 108 rights-aware, community barefoot mental health workers establish ownership and leadership over their community mental health kiosks
• 20 Leaders who are champions and ambassadors
• 3 community mental health kiosks functioning smoothly in their respective wards
• 3 ULBs emerging as stakeholders in the state mental health movement.
Problem
Mental health Institutions (private and public hospitals) are woefully inadequate in meeting the demands of the more than 20 million Indians who live with acute psychosocial disorders. In addition, two other factors have exacerbated the mental health crisis in India:
a) Stigma and discrimination of persons with psychosocial disorders and
b) The absence of accessible, non-judgmental, easy-to-use information and primary mental health care (almost akin to mental health first aid) for persons suffering from general psychosocial disorders.
Taken together, the factors (mentioned above) can dramatically accelerate mental health morbidity - especially of communities that live with the multiple burdens of daily exhaustion, economic stress, poor nutrition and violence (emotional and physical, at work and at home).
In a country where depression is fast emerging as a large-scale health hazard, timely intervention and information, at a preventive, community level can arrest minor disorders from aggravating into severe mental health condition.
Actions
Please find three year strategy plan and Project Cycle document annexed
Results
Over three years, Janamanas and Community Mental Health Kiosks will secure the following impact:
• Social integration of persons with mental health problems in the municipality fabric
• Inclusion of persons with mental health problems as a constituency with the right to access municipal services.
• Creation of a large community volunteer base (rural and urban) which will engage with issues of positive mental health.
• Inclusion of mental health as an important health issue in the Draft Development Plan (DDP)
The 3 year outcomes of the programme will be:
• 150 rights-aware, community barefoot mental health workers establish ownership and leadership over their community mental health resource hubs
• 8 community mental health resource hubs functioning smoothly in their respective wards
• 1 community foundation
• Janamanas and the community resource hubs extend to two municipalities of North Bengal
• ULBs emerge as stakeholders in the state mental health movement.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Please refer to our annexed Strategic Plan Document – attached as Annex 2
What would prevent your project from being a success?
• Although we have signed MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with each municipalities that they would sustain the programme after our exit, yet there remains an inherent apprehension of a) closing down of the programme and b) affecting the quality of work
• Working as barefoot community mental health workers is not a lucrative livelihood option
• Mental health workers along with persons with mental health problems are stigmatized in the society. Existing mindset and biases treat both the categories in the same manner, thereby trivializing the issue
• It is yet to become a public health issue in our country
• Because of our core strategy of partnering with state machinery we run a risk of becoming politically coloured in public mind, and changing political climate can affect us negatively e.g 32 years of left regime is today being challenged by right winged political power and has created an environment of political instability in the state
• The women leaders who are frontrunners of the programme are often burdened with familial pressure and priorities which may become a deterrent to the success of our programme.
• Lack of understanding to accept mental health as a development issue leading to scarcity of funds in the sector ( Please consult annexed document titled Advocacy with Donor organizations)
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
In what country?
India
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Anjali: A human rights based mental health Organization
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Through our partnership with the state health service, we seek to support and facilitate the government towards full compliance of rights framework. Rehabilitation of recovered patients in half-way homes costs approximately USD 2100 per patient, per year, Anjali’s services total to USD 870 per person, per year, due to its partnership with government health systems. Our motive is to ensure that the state is aware of the gaps within the systems and plugs them in time to demonstrate its commitment to its citizens.
Through our partnership with various NGO’s of West Bengal, we seek to integrate the issue of mental health. It is important that NGO’s working in the field of women’s rights, sexuality, livelihood, Child and Adoloscence issues look at the intersectionality with mental health for social change. We are also attempting to build capacities of mental health organizations to design their programmes, which are user friendly, UNCRPD compliant.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Anjali in the next five years, our focus internally will be on
• Strengthening organizational systems and processes
• Ensuring quality excellence and strong process management in all programs
• Developing skills and the discipline for process documentation
• Building second line leadership
• Developing people capabilities
• Strengthening our strategic partnerships (with the government, ULBs, CBOs, media etc) to enable Anjali’s growth with its partners.
• Scaling deep and scaling up of our direct services programme in institutions and community
Building Anjali’s internal capabilities will directly impact the performance of all Anjali programs. Clearly, we are on the critical path right now vis-à-vis managing growth within Anjali and ensuring that the organization is well fortified with human resources, leadership qualities, process rigour and the discipline required for zero-error implementation and fiscal management for us to truly emerge as a field-changing organization.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
It began with an anonymous timid phone call at our office number. ‘I want to report a case in our neighbourhood’. As I listened I gathered her name, Shukla, who lived in a lower middle class suburban area, who had been trying her level best to provide some kind of treatment to Saswati, a woman with serious mental health problems, in her area. Saswati’s brother locked her in a dark room, for several days without water to drink. His motive was to deny her share in the ancestral property. Shukla had organized to send her to a hospital for treatment, but the brother and his wife had colluded with hospital care givers and at the dead of night had she transferred to a suburban mental hospital –300 kilometers away from Kolkata. The whole of the neighbourhood knew about this cruelty but kept quite. We followed up this case, our first case taking us directly into the community and bringing out two contradictory issues of family and community brutality against a person with mental health problems and at the same time a handful of well meaning yet unaware persons in the same community fighting for the cause of a person with mental health problems. I became convinced that many women like Shukla have the potential to become leaders and champions of mental health issue if they are trained, mentored and given an opportunity to test out their learning in public domain. Janamanas was born out of this ‘adventure’ and Saswati, cured and living on her own now, is a trainer and resource person for the Janamanas training and Shukla was among the first batch of trainees. Janamanas grew out of faith and belief in women’s empowerment, leadership qualities and ability to change the society.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
I was born into a family of committed social activists. My mother and grandmother were active in several of Calcutta's charitable institutions. The experience of meeting national leaders from the women's movement deeply impressed my young mind. Mental illness also had disturbing connotations for me right since my childhood. It was embodied in the physical presence of two aunts whom I never got to know. Both suffered from schizophrenia and were locked away from public gaze. But their imagined voices resonated in my mind, stimulating me to pursue a degree in psychology and take up a career in caring for people with psychosocial disability and further when I personally suffered from the disease.
The term ‘NGO’ entered public discourse in the 1990s and it seemed that it was the responsibility of NGOs to address the developmental needs of marginalized population segments. Many new initiatives were born – in mental health care and treatment also – all setting up parallel systems and institutions to offer ‘quality’ mental health care and treatment. I instead launched the Anjali initiative: a partnership with the government to ensure that the State offers quality mental health care and treatment in 2000.
Anjali today has become a thought leader in the sector, works towards making people with psychosocial disability aware of their rights, and ensuring the government and civil society to make the necessary shifts in attitude and practice to make these rights a reality: The right to healthcare and support in institutions/ families, the right to lead a community life, the right to education and training, the right to work and earn an income; and most of all, the right to be treated with dignity as human beings, both in the institutional and social spaces.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | Naveen Shakir said: On November 20, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing ... about this Competition Entry. - 794 days ago read more > |
| Janamanas (translated roughly as the ‘mind of a collective’) Community Resource Hubs has been chosen as a finalist in Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing. - 807 days ago |
| patobm updated this Competition Entry. - 845 days ago |
| mental health alerts said: To the System Administrator/Web content ManagerI see that attachments are mentioned in this entry. But I don't see any attachments. Is ... about this Competition Entry. - 848 days ago read more > |
| changemakers.asia updated this Competition Entry. - 849 days ago |
| changemakers.asia updated this Competition Entry. - 849 days ago |
| changemakers.asia updated this Competition Entry. - 849 days ago |
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