Strengthening Response Toward Promoting Mental Health in India: A Narrative Review

Mental health is an essential component of human development. It deals with human ideas and emotions, and it helps to lead a good life by paving the way for healthy minds. The absence of a healthy mind is a substantial hindrance to personal, societal, and national economic, political, and social functioning. For a long time in India, mental illness has been shrouded in stigma, ignorance, and superstition. The National Mental Health Program (NMHP) has undergone major strategic revisions throughout its existence, from instituting a district as the entity for program planning and implementation under the District Mental Health Program (DMHP) to integrating it with the National Rural Health Mission to productively scale up the program. Many researchers reviewed the program, which was also evaluated by governing and non-governmental institutions. Financial and human capital restrictions, a lack of public involvement, inefficient training, poor non-governmental organization/private cooperation, and a deficit of solid monitoring and evaluation system have all hampered the program's impact. A thorough study of the literature on India's unique mental health initiatives was conducted using particular Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms, including “community mental health program,” “mental health project,” “innovative in mental health programs,” and “India,” and Boolean operators “AND/OR.” The MeSH keywords used were as follows: mental health project OR (“mental health project” [Mesh] OR “innovative in mental health programs” [Mesh]) AND community mental health program AND (“community mental health program” [Mesh]), India OR (“India” [Mesh]). A preliminary search was conducted in Google Scholar and the PubMed database. A total of 55 indexed papers were found, of which 24 articles were duplicates, hence they were removed and the research eventually contained 31 investigations. Over time, it has become clear that a strong focus on community mental health is critical, and that the DMHP and NMHP, in terms of coverage and utilization of their service components, need to be strengthened. As with many other public health programs, public awareness and information, education, and communication programs must be the most important components for change to occur at the community level. Many tactics and innovations also help to democratize mental health care by allowing the integration of mental health programs into primary care, which is more equitable in the long run and leads to “good mental health for everyone.”