Mariwala Health Initiative

30/03/2026

Drawing upon this year’s theme for : “BipolarStrong”, we are featuring our partner Mental Health Support Foundation (MHSF), based in Mumbai and originally established in 2013 by Vijay Nallawala as Bipolar India.

Over the last decade, MHSF has steadily worked to bridge the systemic gaps that affect people living at the intersection of disability, gender, discrimination.

At the heart of MHSF’s ‘Let’s Walk Together’ initiative, the focus is on assisting people so that they are able to live their life with a sense of dignity. When sustaining at work is managed, it also helps with resilience.

29/03/2026

26/03/2026

“True mental health work believes in gender diversity, in expansive gender expressions and opens up possibilities for life and living."

-- Dr Shruti Chakravarty, Chief Advisor at Mariwala Health Initiative, speaking from the Azad Maidan protest in Mumbai rejecting the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026.

As mental health professionals stand in solidarity with trans and gender-diverse communities, please read and sign the MHI statement, you can also access the resource of listed MHPs offering low-cost therapy sessions for trans individuals over the next three months: both links are in our linktree.

24/03/2026

The role of the State in mitigating violent conflicts, establishing justice, and guaranteeing non-repetition requires more than just setting up mechanisms to investigate - it must acknowledge that legal closure is only part of uncovering truth and addressing collective trauma.

Trauma does not end when the violence ends. To prevent erasure of lived realities of the victims and survivors of human rights violations is mental health justice. Swipe>>

22/03/2026

In India, as in many parts of the world, women and girls are primarily responsible for collecting water, often spending hours each day walking long distances under physically demanding and unsafe conditions.

Despite this, the mental health impacts of water insecurity remain largely absent from policy and public discourse. Recognising water access as a mental health issue makes visible the cumulative strain of this labour and shifts attention towards questions of accountability, participation, and care. Any meaningful response must move beyond access alone to consider whose work is being relied upon, whose voices are included in decision-making, and whose wellbeing is being prioritised.

21/03/2026

On World Poetry Day, we honour anti-caste poetry that refuses erasure and challenges who gets to be heard.

The Reserved Compartment creates space where Dalit-Ambedkarite voices speak without dilution, turning poetry into resistance, memory, and community.
In a casteist society, their work is about dignity, belonging, and mental health.

MentalHealthJustice

21/03/2026

Racism is sustained through everyday practices of exclusion, stereotyping, and erasure. For communities from the Northeast, this can mean being hypervisible in public spaces as targets of discrimination, while simultaneously being rendered invisible in media, policy, and public imagination. This dual condition has implications that extend beyond representation — it shapes access to resources, recognition within institutions, and the availability of care that is responsive to lived experience.

When systems fail to acknowledge racism, they also fail to address the mental health impacts that follow from it.

20/03/2026

Sign on. Take a stand. ✊

Click the link in bio or visit mhi.org.in to access the statement.

18/03/2026

The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill risks undermining self-determination and causing serious mental health harm through increased gatekeeping and exclusion.

Mariwala Health Initiative is calling on MHPs to act:
• Sign the statement
• Support community-led efforts
• Offer queer-trans affirmative services

Click the link in bio or visit mhi.org.in to access the statement.

16/03/2026

A Statement from Mariwala Health Initiative: A Mental Health and Rights-Based Perspective on the Proposed Amendment to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026. Read >>