Who we are
Good mental health is recognised as an integral part of a person’s wellbeing and development embedded in all aspects of life, their beliefs, faith, culture, environment, spirituality, work, housing, education, family and community respect.
Our aim is to spread public awareness on mental health literacy in urban and rural India. Our work focuses on lived expertise stories of people with mental health problems and their families to promote public understanding about living with mental illness, help seeking and support for promoting mental health and wellbeing.
Our emphasis is on formulating knowledge in new, creative and accessible ways, through use of creative methodologies and media engagement as an intervention to enable knowledge to be used in genuinely empowering and emancipatory ways by the public and services in urban and rural India.
Meet the MeHeLP Team
Prof.Raghu Raghavan
Professor of Mental Health, Director of Mary Seacole Research Centre, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Prof.Brown
Professor of Health Communication, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Prof.Michael Wilson
Professor of Drama, Head of Creative Arts, Loughborough University, Leicester, UK
Prof. Monica Lakhanpaul
Professor of Integrated Community Child Health, Head of Population Policy and Practice, University College London, London, UK
Prof.Asha Banu Soletti,
Professor at the Centre for Health and Mental Health, School of Social Work (SSW), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Dean, Student's Affairs, TISS.
Prof. Sivakami Muthusamy
Chairperson - Centre for Health and Social Sciences, Professor-School of Health system Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Dr Erminia Colucci
Associate Professor in Visual and Cultural Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University London (UK).
Dr Meena K.S Iyer
Additional Professor and Head, Mental Health Education, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India
Dr Nadia Svirydzenka
Senior Lecturer, Division of Psychology, School of Applied social Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester
Dr. Amanda Wilson
Senior Lecturer, Division of Psychology, School of Applied social Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester
Dr. Melaneia Warwick
Research Associate in Applied Storytelling, School of English and Drama, Loughborough University, Leicester, UK
Dr.Indrani Lahiri
Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Project Partners
Chandradasan
Artistic Director, Lokadharmi, Kochi, Kerala, India
Andy Barrett
Artistic Director, Excavate, Nottingham, UK
Dr. Chitra Venkateswaran
Clinical Director, MEHAC Foundation, Ernakulam, Kerala, India
Dr. Manoj Kumar
Mental Health Action Trust (MHAT), Kozhikode, Kerala, India
Dr. Sam Manickam
Mental Health Action Trust (MHAT), Kozhikode, Kerala, India
Parvathi Pradeep
Digital Consultant, MeHeLP
Research Fellows and Link workers
Dr. Sanjana Ravi Kumar
(MHAT) - Research Fellow
Aarcha Gowri Varma
(MEHAC) -Research Fellow
Anagha Chandrashekaran Remadevi
(MHAT) -Research Assistant
Sindhu Vinod
(MEHAC)-Research Assistant