NewsVoir
New Delhi [India], May 5: The India Mental Health Alliance (IMHA) today announced that it has crossed 300 member organisations across 30 states and union territories, marking a significant milestone for India's evolving mental health ecosystem.
More than a growth milestone, the development reflects a broader shift across stakeholders towards greater collaboration, shared learning, and coordinated action for mental health, which has long operated in fragmented silos. IMHA was established on the belief that meaningful progress in mental healthcare requires bringing clinical and lived experience expertise together; aided by resource mobilization from philanthropy, government and the private sector collectively.
Neha Kirpal, Co-Founder, IMHA, said, "Reaching 300 members is significant because of what it makes possible for everyone. When cross-sectoral organisations have a shared alliance to connect, share on-ground learnings across their cultural contexts, and build capacities together; the entire ecosystem becomes stronger and more effective. IMHA's role has been to act as a catalyst and facilitator, creating the possibilities for partnerships, and pathways that enable knowledge, expertise, and support to flow more freely across the nation. This kind of collaborative infrastructure is essential to move mental health from the margins to the mainstream as a developmental priority in our journey towards Viksit Bharat."
Over the past year, this vision has translated into a focused effort to - Connect, Convene, Collaborate, and build Capacity across the mental health ecosystem. IMHA's key initiatives towards these goals in this past year have included:
- A national member directory with QR-enabled discoverability tools for all members, funders and public institutions to connect with organisations from across India
- Active digital communities, including an active nationwide WhatsApp group
- Ongoing member engagement across geographies with regional meet ups
- Building members' capacities through monthly curated sessions and consultations with global experts; themes include organisational strengthening, youth mental health, lived experience expertise, public health integration, cross-sector programming, and engagement with funders and government
Together, these efforts are helping organisations discover one another, exchange knowledge, and collaborate more effectively across the country.
Building on these connections, IMHA has also prioritised convening as a core pillar of ecosystem-building by creating spaces for organisations to come together, exchange ideas, and forge partnerships. Through its 'Connecting India for Mental Health' series, IMHA hosted its first regional meet-up in Mumbai, with upcoming convenings planned in:
- Guwahati (May 2026)
- Chennai (August 2026)
- Bangalore (December 2026)
This builds on the momentum of IMHA's first Annual Convening last year, a landmark closed-door gathering of 130+ Alliance members from across the country for deeper dialogue and partnership-building; the second edition of the Annual Convening to be announced shortly for the month of Oct/Nov 2026.
This culture of shared learning is further anchored in IMHA's Knowledge Centre, a hub for credible, India-specific mental health resources. The platform currently hosts 300+ curated resources, including toolkits, capacity-building materials, lived experience-led resources, laws and policies, landscape reports, and data-driven insights. Designed for NGOs, funders, policy makers, students and mental health professionals; the Knowledge Centre will now expand into video-based learning from Indian experts and increased regional language content to deepen contextual relevance.
Vasvi Bharat Ram, Founder Chairperson, India Mental Health Alliance, says, "A truly developed India must also be a mentally healthy India. Economic growth, educational outcomes, workforce productivity, and social cohesion are deeply linked to the mental well-being of citizens. Building this requires coordinated investment, long-term thinking, and shared responsibility across multiple fronts, from systemic capacity-building and workforce development to knowledge creation and improving the overall quality of care. Philanthropic capital, government funding, and private sector investment each have a distinct role to play to build a mental health ecosystem that is more accessible, resilient, and responsive to India's needs."
Therefore, IMHA is actively expanding the pool of unrestricted philanthropic capital dedicated to long-term ecosystem-building in mental health, with recent pledges from donors such as Manisha Dhawan from the Convergence Foundation of India and renowned philanthropist Dr. Pheroza Godrej.
As India moves towards 2047, IMHA's expanding strength reflects a new, decentralised approach to mental health: one rooted in equity, shared ownership, cross sectoral collaboration; with lived experience experts and their carers at the centre of all care design.
About The India Mental Health Alliance
The India Mental Health Alliance (IMHA) is a Section 8 not-for-profit organisation launched in 2023 as a partnership between Vasvi and Ashish Bharat Ram, Amaha Health and Children First. IMHA is a cross-sectoral platform working to strengthen India's mental health ecosystem by convening stakeholders, building capacity, and catalysing collaboration at scale. As a growing national alliance of 300 cross-sectoral member organisations from 30 states & UTs, IMHA helps mobilize existing strengths, identify care gaps, and enables stronger coordination & collaboration pan-India. Its capacity-building efforts support community organisations, healthcare & educational institutions, as well as individual mental health practitioners through multi-channel knowledge sharing and learning initiatives. IMHA also hosts a growing Knowledge Centre with 300+ multilingual resources to democratise access to mental health information. Through its work, IMHA aims to mainstream mental health as a national development priority; improve quality of care; embed Lived Experience Expertise (LEE) in care design and practice; champion social justice in mental health; and mobilise greater long-term, unrestricted philanthropic capital to support systemic, scalable solutions across India.
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