India to Pilot a BRICS Network of Mental-Health Centres of Excellence, With NIMHANS as Coordinating Centre

The news

New Delhi. A newly established BRICS Network of Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in mental health will be piloted by India, with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, as the coordinating centre, The Indian Express reports. BRICS is the grouping that began with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and has since expanded. NIMHANS is developing the network’s governance protocol, while a multi-country steering committee and technical working groups are being formed; centres of excellence, agreements, contact points and governance mechanisms are being worked out. “The hope is that this network will mitigate the existing treatment gaps across BRICS countries by scaling task-sharing models and digital tele-health platforms. It will also aim to integrate mental healthcare into primary health centres, bringing services to hard-to-reach and rural populations,” said Dr Naveen Kumar C, professor of psychiatry at NIMHANS. Task-sharing means training non-specialist health workers to identify common mental disorders, offer basic support and refer serious cases, so that scarce psychiatrists are not the only point of care. The report describes approaches members bring: an educational manga created in China to fight stigma, telling the story of a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Xiaoyu, whose anxiety and depression are dismissed as laziness until a classmate helps her reach a counselling clinic; a 24x7 digital platform in Indonesia for mental-health crises and suicide prevention; pictorial, story-based screening by community health workers in South Africa; virtual-reality clinical simulations in the UAE; and tech-assisted assessment in Russia using heart-rate variability, galvanic skin response and biofeedback. India brings its tele-mental-health services. Collaboration will span “technical expertise, joint research, capacity building, and knowledge exchange rather than pure monetary grants”, Dr Naveen said. Possible joint research includes AI-assisted screening, digital interventions, suicide prevention, biomarkers and epidemiological mapping; a compendium of evidence-based clinical protocols, culturally adaptable tools and public-education strategies is envisaged, as are common approaches to data privacy, cybersecurity, ethical AI and rights-based policy. Dr Naveen said an estimated 197.3 million Indians were affected by mental disorders in 2017, with a treatment gap of 70%-92%, a shortage of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses concentrated in cities, and projected economic losses of $1.08 trillion between 2012 and 2030. The syllabus link is GS2 on health and on groupings involving India, and GS3 on technology in public services.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 turned access to mental healthcare into an enforceable right. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 replaced the Mental Health Act, 1987 and was framed to align Indian law with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which India has ratified. Section 18 gives every person the right to access mental healthcare and treatment from services run or funded by the government, which must be affordable, of good quality and available without discrimination. The Act allows a person to make an advance directive on how they wish to be treated and to appoint a nominated representative. It establishes a Central Mental Health Authority, State Mental Health Authorities and Mental Health Review Boards to regulate institutions and hear complaints.
2. Section 115 of the 2017 Act effectively decriminalised attempted suicide. Section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act presumes, unless proved otherwise, that a person who attempts suicide is under severe stress and shall not be tried and punished under the then Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. It also places a duty on the government to provide care, treatment and rehabilitation to such a person to reduce the risk of a recurrence. The shift treats a suicide attempt as a health emergency rather than a crime. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the IPC, does not carry over a general offence of attempting suicide.
3. NIMHANS is an Institute of National Importance and the backbone of India’s tele-mental-health service. NIMHANS in Bengaluru was declared an Institute of National Importance by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences, Bengaluru Act, 2012, which gives it the status of a deemed university able to award degrees. It conducted the National Mental Health Survey of 2015-16, which estimated the treatment gap for mental disorders at between 70% and 92%, the range Dr Naveen quotes. It is the nodal centre of Tele-MANAS, the National Tele Mental Health Programme launched in October 2022, which provides free counselling through the toll-free number 14416 in several languages. Tele-MANAS routes callers to trained counsellors and, where needed, to specialists and in-person services.
4. India’s public mental-health programmes build from the district and the primary centre. The National Mental Health Programme was launched in 1982 to integrate mental healthcare with general health services. Its District Mental Health Programme, begun in 1996, created district-level teams for outpatient care, community outreach and awareness. Mental, neurological and substance-use disorders are part of the expanded service package of Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, the renamed health and wellness centres, which is where task-sharing by community health officers would operate. The National Suicide Prevention Strategy of 2022 was India’s first such national strategy. The World Health Organization’s Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) provides the standard guidance for non-specialists to identify and manage priority conditions.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS2 lists health as a social sector and BRICS as a grouping involving India. The syllabus asks about development and management of services relating to health, and about important international institutions and groupings. Mains has asked about the treatment gap in mental health, the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 and the role of technology in extending care. This story connects domestic health policy with India’s role in BRICS, which it chairs this year.
2. Prelims tests provisions of the 2017 Act and national programmes. UPSC and State commissions have set statements on the decriminalisation of attempted suicide, the rights conferred by the Mental Healthcare Act, the Tele-MANAS helpline and the status of institutes of national importance. These are durable facts that recur.
3. Essay and GS4 draw on stigma and dignity. The Chinese manga’s theme of ‘losing face’ and family blame is a ready illustration for essays on mental health, youth pressures and the dignity of persons with illness. GS4 case studies on students under exam stress and on compassionate administration use the same material.

Analysis

1. The network’s real product is a protocol for task-sharing, and India needs that more than it needs research papers. A 70%-92% treatment gap will never be closed by training more psychiatrists alone, because specialists take a decade to produce and concentrate in cities. The only scalable path is for community health officers, ASHAs and nurses to handle identification, basic counselling and referral, with specialists supervising. South Africa’s pictorial screening and Indonesia’s crisis platform are practical tools for exactly this. If the network produces a tested, adaptable compendium for primary-care workers, it will have justified itself; if it produces mainly conferences and joint papers, it will not.
2. A network built on knowledge exchange without money is realistic, but it limits ambition. Dr Naveen’s point that collaboration will be technical rather than ‘pure monetary grants’ suits BRICS, which lacks a health fund of the kind the World Bank or Global Fund offer. Knowledge sharing is cheap and can be sustained through changes of government. The limitation is implementation: protocols need trained staff, drugs and supervision at primary centres, and those cost money that each country must find domestically. The network can shape how India spends its own mental-health budget, but it cannot substitute for that budget.
3. AI screening and physiological biomarkers raise privacy questions the network rightly puts on its agenda. Mental-health data are among the most stigmatising a person can have, and tools that read heart-rate variability or skin response, or AI models trained on patient conversations, create new risks of profiling and leakage. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 does not create a special category for health data, so a shared BRICS framework on privacy and ethical AI could fill a practical gap for clinicians. The counter-view is that BRICS members have very different standards of state access to data, so a common approach may converge on the lowest standard rather than the highest.
4. Stigma is a larger barrier than supply in many families, which is why the manga matters. The Chinese story of a girl whose depression is called laziness would be familiar to many Indian households, where seeking help can be seen as a mark of weakness or a threat to marriage and career prospects. Culturally adapted public education — comics, stories, local-language messages — is cheaper than clinics and can raise demand for care that already exists, including Tele-MANAS. India could adapt such material for schools and coaching hubs, where exam stress is acute. Awareness without services, however, only frustrates, so education and supply must grow together.
5. India’s leadership in health diplomacy works best when it exports systems it has actually run at scale. India’s tele-mental-health service is a genuine asset to bring to the table, having been built on a public platform with a single national number. Leading the network lets India shape norms on digital health for a large part of the developing world, much as it has done with digital public infrastructure. The risk is presenting pilots as achievements before evaluation; Tele-MANAS’s outcomes on referral and follow-up need independent study. Credibility abroad will depend on measurable results at home.

Administrator's brainstorm