The population of India has crossed the billion mark but the state of services for mental health is yet to make strides with equal pace. Given the rate of occurrence of major mental disorders being as high as 1-2% the resultant situation is that there exists a huge gap in supply and demand for mental health interventions. With the objective of creating access to mental health care and treatment for those are socially, economically, and geographically marginalized Ashadeep initiated a Psychiatric OPD in Guwahati in 2006 and undertook outreach mental health camps from 2006-12 in 8 remote regions of Assam including conflict areas such as Chirang, Baksa and Kokrajhar in Bodo Territory areas. The outreach camps consisted of psychiatric treatment for persons with mental illness and training of local NGOs who would continue to secure mental health needs for the community they were serving.

The outreach mental health camps have been shaped as ‘Community Mental Health Programmes’ (CMHP) in the year 2012. These programmes include creating access to mental health interventions and developing sustainable measures for empowering the community on mental health. During 2012-2016, these programmes were implemented in one block each in the districts of Darrang, Morigaon, and Kamrup (rural) in Assam with funding support from the Tata Trusts. A total of 1906 persons in the three blocks had been intervened through this programme. The major aim of this programme is to facilitate mental health interventions from the Government Health Care facilities within the block along with home based psycho-education by trained Community Health Worker. To sustain these efforts partnership and capacity building of local Civil Society Organizations and Government Health delivery systems are undertaken.

Currently, the program is implemented in Rangjuli Block of Goalpara district, Bhurbandha Block of Morigaon District in collaboration with Morigaon Mahila Mehfil and Chumukedima Block of Dimapur District, Nagaland in collaboration with Prodigals’ Home. The program is supported by Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore for a period of three years from June’2020. No. of Patients enrolled: 1777.

OUTDOOR PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC

undertaken once a week within the city. This urban based community mental health intervention benefits not only past residents of Navachetna and Udayan but also caters to socially, economically and geographically marginalized population residing within the city of Guwahati as free consultation on mental health is provided bsy a psychiatrist and other trained staff members of Ashadeep. Till January 2021, 1330 patients have been registered in this OPD.