Manas Foundation

About us

Manas Foundation, a New Delhi-based registered trust, was founded in 2000 by a group of mental health professionals in response to our experience of the growing need for community-based mental healthcare. Coming from the fields of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, the founding trustees transformed their fundamental clinical practice into a multifaceted program that includes research, advocacy, trainings and a range of last-mile mental health services that reaches marginalized communities.

The three critical aspects of our approach to mental health include:

• Understanding mental health from a psycho-social perspective.
• Demonstrating the linkages between mental health, discrimination, poverty and access to justice.
• De-stigmatizing mental health issues and creating both a demand and a supply for mental health care among the most marginalized communities of India.

Manas Foundation’s mission statement is as follows. “We all have mental health needs. At Manas, we strive to mainstream mental health through research-based therapeutic interventions and through creating awareness to enable diverse communities and individuals to lead psychologically healthy lives.”

Manas has been co-creating and customizing mental health service delivery models that are plugged in to ongoing interventions and systems in the community. Running these mental health units and counselling centres, as well as building capacities of CSOs working in the field by addressing their mental health needs, recognizing and dealing with patterns of violence and abuse, as well as transforming their underlying patterns of thought & issues around equality and control has been the core of our organizational activity.