Founding and managing a mental health establishment under the Mental Healthcare Act 2017

The World Health Organization Atlas reveals lower bed and mental health professionals ratio per population in India. This may be due to a poor allocation of funding in the mental health sector by the Government. This resulted in a lack of complete and comprehensive care ranging from acute treatment to long-term rehabilitation throughout the country. The spiral of specialist care needs such as deaddiction, child psychiatric needs, and rehabilitation facility are available only to a handful of the population in metropolitan cities in India. The launching or establishment of new Mental Health Establishments (MHEs) and upgrading mental health service may provide strategies to bridge this gap from the private mental health sector. Following the inception of “Mental Healthcare Act 2017” (MHCA 2017), the process of setting up MHEs and their operations comes with new legal and healthcare aspects that remain debatable and unsettled. We put forth the basic measures that can be considered and undertaken to establish an exemplary MHE under the MHCA 2017.