Mind the Gap: Bridging the enormous deficit of mental healthcare in India

One in five Indians will experience a mental illness by 2020. However, according to estimates, even if all ~4,000 psychiatrists available in India are involved in face-to-face patient contact for eight hours a day, five days a week, and see a single patient for a total of 15-30 minutes over a 12 month period, they would together be able to care for only 10-20% of mental health patients in India. Besides a severe shortage of mental health professionals, scarce infrastructure, poor quality services, lack of awareness, dearth of research to build and scale programs, and limited funding, all contribute to India's growing mental health crisis. Dasra's report, Mind the Gap, lays out the key challenges and priorities for action, alongside the work of scalable and impactful social organizations for funders' consideration