Saarthak’s Goals
• We work on increasing awareness about mental health through targeted campaigns. We link with and sensitize other sectors of development so as to help them focus on mental health of the people they work with.
• It is our endeavor to create replicable models of service delivery of mental health that are low cost and self-sustaining. These service delivery models have as their foundation the use of existing resources in the community and are made successful by a significant participation from the community that they serve.
• It is a key need for us to create a voice for the consumer of the mental health services. Lack of informed consent for treatment, lack of human rights in mental hospitals and discrimination due to stigma are rampant in India. It is our belief that an informed consumer is the only possible strategy out of the therapeutic nihilism that surrounds mental health.
• Training opportunities for the young mental health professional is another significant area of our work. With around three thousand psychiatrists and a few hundred psychologists and social workers and with a meager number of graduates from the elite institutions of training there is shortfall in the human resources in the field of mental health. It is our belief that mental health human resources in South Asia have to be multi disciplinary and multi-tiered. The training has to be skill based and community oriented. Saarthak provides trainings for primary and secondary level of mental health professionals. Saarthak is looking at the technology of the Internet to direct short term training at other health professionals.
Saarthak’s Projects and Activities
Saarthak has six projects. These projects are interlinked and work across a range of mental health needs:
Operation Hope: Dare To Dream
Operation Hope is a mental health project focusing on the needs of young people. It provides opportunities for young people to organise local community development projects. This includes a popular phone line, which provides counselling services for schools and universities. Since its inception in 1997 the programme has helped 50,000 young people to deal with psychological distress, trained about 2000 parents in parenting skills and equipped over 500 teachers with counselling skills.
Saarthak conducts an ongoing programme of workshops at schools. Saarthak also provides counseling services at JNU. Operation Hope also through its mobile mental health services reaches 10 other NGOs in Delhi and provides mental health services to young people living in difficult circumstances like homelessness, trafficking ,custodial care and violence
DOR
This is an inclusive program for people whose lives are touched by disability. The programme works on the principles of cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy. It runs drop in center, Movie club, Book club, Music club and a Cafe. It also includes support groups for caregivers, befriending services, psycho-educational workshops, supported businesses and supported training programs for people with physical and psychiatric disability. It tries to inform the mainstream and the community about the potential of people with psychiatric disorder. DOR is a joint prgram of AADI and Saarthak.
Saarthi: Training Opportunities at Saarthak
Saarthak provides training in psychotherapeutic skills especially Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Family Therapy and Group Therapy. It has a three-year part time program for postgraduates in psychology and social work. The first year of the programme offers basic counselling skills training and is open to people from helping professions.
This course offers four hundred hours of supervised psychotherapy experience and personal therapy. Peer supervision and debriefing avenues are available. Post course evaluation is done by experienced mental health professionals. Saarthak works as a capacity building resource organisation for other NGOs.
Mainstreaming Mental Health
Saarthak has completed many short-term projects to mainstream the mental health services. These have included:
- Counseling services in factories and corporates in partnership with Global Alliance
-Counselling services for people with disability in partnership with AADI and training to their staff and students
-Resource Assessment and capacity building for mental health interventions in anti-trafficking sector for South Asia in partnership with UNIFEM
-Capacity building for psychosocial intervention in Tsunami affected communities in Tamil Nadu in partnership with CRS/CARITAS/TASSOS
-Capacity building for psychosocial intervention in Tsunami affected communities in Sri Lanka in partnership with UNIFEM
-Capacity building for mental health interventions for the CHARCA project in Mizoram
-Support groups for survivors of Cancer in Association with Cancer Sahyog
-Counseling services for survivors of trafficking, children and women in adversity
-Individual Counselling for victims of Uphaar Fire Tragedy
Fight unto Normalcy
This is an advocacy campaign for the human rights of people living with mental illness. Saarthak is working to increase awareness about this issue amongst key decision-makers. The long-term aim is to advocate for setting up voluntary community based services to undertake human rights watch and assurance for people living with mental illness. The other aim is to create a volunteer support and befriending services to help people in mental hospitals. Saarthak is a petitioner in public interest litigation before the Supreme Court of India to achieve these objectives.
Why Not Us?
This is a platform for people whose lives have been affected by mental illness to share their experience and provide an avenue to express themselves. Works of creativity are published in Saarthak’s journal for mental health advocacy – Indiahopes. Indiahopes.org is under construction and will provide similar opportunities on the Internet.
Clinical Services
Saarthak provides free clinical services through Individual therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Group Therapy and Family and Marital Therapy. All donations go towards funding the Saarthak’s projects.
Our Publications
•Indiahopes: A journal for mental health advocacy
•The Sounds of Silence: A manual for forming therapeutic relationships with survivors of trafficking
•Enable: A manual for care and protection process of survivor of trafficking
•Outgrowing the Pain: A manual for individual intervention
•Ensure: A mental health audit tool kit
•Dare to Dream: A set of six self- help audio cassettes for survivors of violence in trafficking context ( English/ Hindi)
•The Mind of Survivor: Report and Way forward for mental health interventions for survivors of trafficking.
•COACH: A manual for HR managers
•Operation Hope: A manual for Counselling counselling skills for Phone Counselling
•Khushali: A manual for starting counseling services in export factories (Hindi)
•Self-help: Saying No, Art of Parenting and Anger Coolants
Saarthak Team
• At the core of Saarthak is a multidisciplinary team of mental health professionals. It also has people from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, education, creative art, law, marketing, journalism and finance. Dr Achal Bhagat, Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at Apollo Hospital, is the Director of Saarthak. The Director is supported by a team of trained clinical psychologists and social workers.
• About two hundred volunteers support the team for its information education campaigns, vocational rehabilitation and advocacy. The volunteers include young people who provide us a source of energy and ideas and leading professionals from the field of marketing, advertising, journalism, law and finance. The volunteers also include people recovering from psychiatric disorder and caregivers.
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