As conversations on mental health expand in scope across India, public discourse and policy are slowly shifting to a purpose-driven empathetic approach that shakes off historical taboos. Recent union budgets have increased allocations for mental health; the 2026-2027 budget reflects a commitment to strengthen institutions such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, and to build similar mental healthcare institutions pan-India in addition to national tele-mental health services. Despite these efforts to promote awareness and increase care, there remains a stark gap between policy and lived experiences of healthcare; 70-92% of Indians with mental disorders do not receive the care they need, while 1 in 20 Indians suffer from depression, and 60% of the country faces work-related burnout. This is largely due to a combination of stigma, a lack of understanding, and limited access to mental health resources.
In response, a dynamic ecosystem of entrepreneurs and practitioners has emerged in the last decade who offer alternative methodologies of therapy and care, aimed at bridging this divide. These therapies centre individual experiences, while also committing to community centric models that slip into the gaps left by institutional inadequacies, speaking to both unmet needs and evolving cultural understandings of wellbeing. These technologies have in the past year alone shown significant impact; there has been a 31% increase in individuals seeking help when it comes to mental health, while the associated stigma has been on a downward trend over the last few years. Mental Health: The Founder’s Room brings together founders who have created initiatives, organisations or campaigns which have identified specific problems in the field of mental healthcare and worked to create change in the field. Through this conversation, we will look to highlight the specifics of the work the founders have achieved, the biggest impact their work has had, and the policy and public awareness changes that still need to be addressed in order to achieve mental health outcomes and well-being.
Join Neha Kirpal, Co-Founder, Amaha, and author, Homecoming; Kavita Arora, Co-founder, Children First; Devika Mehta, Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist, and Co-founder, Synchrony; alongside moderator Tanmoy Goswami, lived experience expert and creator of Sanity, as they unpack the needs of the future.
Together, they will discuss the experiences that led them to begin this entrepreneurial journey, the need for alternative forms of therapy in India, the challenges in creating new systems of mental healthcare and the importance of access, advocacy, and lived experiences in the mental healthcare space.
Our series on mental health is now in its fifth season. In the past, we have looked at mental health and social fabrics and how our social realities in India shape our sense of self, our identity, our mental well-being and institutions of care. We have also looked at addiction, disorders, the impact of the pandemic on specific populations, art and creativity. You can learn more here.
This series is supported by the Raika Godrej Family Trust.
SPEAKERS
Neha Kirpal is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, speaker and lived experience ambassador. Neha is passionate about building a a mental healthcare ecosystem for India — drawing from her own lived experience as a lifelong carer to a parent with schizophrenia and a sibling suicide loss survivor.
Her debut book, Homecoming: Mental Health Journeys of Resilience, Healing & Wholeness, holds courageous first person narratives of 11 women leaders, navigating severe mental illness and sharing their experience, strength and hope. An Aspen & Eisenhower fellow, she is a recipient of several leadership awards including the Nari Shakti award given by the President of India.
Dr Kavita Arora is a child and adolescent psychiatrist with over twenty-five years of practice experience and is a co-founder of Children First. She has grown up with a parent who had mental illness and multiple medical disorders for whom she eventually became a carer. She is also part of the founding cohort of the IMHA. Committed to early intervention and inclusive mental healthcare, she has helped shape a multidisciplinary, indigenous model for neurodivergent children and families with diverse developmental needs which runs at Children First. Identifying as queer, she has actively worked with and promoted equity and diversity inclusion across all gender and sexual identities in mental healthcare. She values poetry, art, meaningful conversations, hugs and, above all, a discerning sense of humour!
Devika Mehta Kadam is a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist (R-DMP) with a comprehensive background in expressive arts and clinical practice. She currently serves as the Program Head for the Post Graduate Diploma in Expressive Arts Therapy at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and is also a faculty member for Diploma courses in Dance Movement Therapy. Ms. Mehta Kadam is the Co-Founder of ‘Synchrony’ (www.synchronyindia.com), an organization dedicated to providing mental health services and creative arts-based training across diverse populations since 2013. She holds significant international roles, including being a Founding Board Member of the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapy (www.iadmt.org) and the Regional Director (Asia) and Executive Board Member for the International Association of Creative Arts in Education and Training (www.iacaet.org). A dedicated scholar, she is a current PhD candidate at The University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and holds three Master’s degrees in Dance Movement Therapy, Applied Psychology (Clinical), and Indian Folk Dance. As a published author and researcher, she has represented her work at international conferences across the USA and Europe, with her research focusing on embodied indigenous knowledge, decolonising bodies, and neurorehabilitation.
Tanmoy Goswami is a lived experience expert and creator of Sanity, India’s first solo-run, independent, reader-funded mental health storytelling platform. Previously, he served as Associate Editor at ET Prime and Head of Desk and co-curator of the 40 under 40 list at Fortune’s Indian edition. During his stint at Fortune India, he won the Asian Journalism Prize awarded by IE Business School, Madrid.
Tanmoy was the youngest Managing Editor of The Smart Manager, a management magazine co-founded by Nitin Nohria, former Dean of Harvard Business School, and business historian Gita Piramal. He was also Founding Editor of Innowin, India’s first innovation-focused magazine from the Marico Innovation Foundation.
Tanmoy’s work with Sanity has been covered in — and he has been quoted in — the global press, including Business Insider, Forbes, The Lancet Psychiatry, the Times of India, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He has spoken and delivered learning modules at Columbia Journalism School, the University of Amsterdam, the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and FLAME University.
In 2022, Tanmoy was inducted as a fellow at the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Global Mental Health, jointly run by King’s College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. From 2022 to 2025, he was a LinkedIn Top Voice in Social Impact for his mental health advocacy.
IN COLLABORATION WITH
