Fostering counter-narratives in suicide prevention in India: Perspectives from ongoing work with Mariwala Health Initiative and partners

While issues of mental health and suicide prevention are gaining traction in India over the past years, with legislation such as the Mental Healthcare Act (2017) coming to pass and the launch of India’s first ever National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2022), narratives around and responses to suicide remain largely embedded in individualized and biomedical paradigms, with preventative action and initiatives conceptualized top-down, focused on “adapting” evidence-based methods from other contexts. As an organisation committed to anti-oppressive and rights-based mental health and wellbeing, and cognizant that dominant approaches to suicide prevention are insufficient, our strategy for supporting suicide prevention work in the nation focuses on organisations and collectives led by marginalised groups with lived experience not just related to suicide but of their specific socio-economic-political contexts, and those seeking to act on “root causes” of suicide in their contexts. Among these are organisations addressing farmer suicide in Maharashtra, supporting women beareaved by suicide in Tamil Nadu, providing livelihood and career support for marginalised students in Puducherry as prevention, and addressing patriarchial violence against women in Rajasthan as prevention. Through such programs, we find glimpses of what critical suicide prevention can look like in practice in India.

Priti is CEO at Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI), a grantmaking, advocacy and capacity-building organization focused on making mental health accessible to marginalized communities in India, and on promoting a rights-based mental health sector in India. At MHI, she leads the work on suicide prevention, workplace mental health, and advocacy with government stakeholders and other funders to invest in mental health.

Saisha is Research Manager at Mariwala Health Initiative, and a recent graduate from the MSc Global Mental Health & Society program at the University of Edinburgh, where she wrote a dissertation on non-clinical approaches to youth suicide in India.