The festival, a collaboration between RNPF, NIMHANS and NCBS, will explore multiple facets of mental health October 26 and 27
“For too long, mental health has been pushed into dark corners of society. It’s about time sunlight filtered through,” says Rohini Nilekani, the Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNPF), which is co-hosting Mannotsava, a mental health festival. The event seeks to put the spotlight on multiple aspects of mental health and create “a public safe space where everybody knows we are not alone in this, and we are not our illness,” as Nilekani puts it.
A collaboration between RNPF, the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), the two-day festival will be held in Bengaluru this weekend to re-frame the narrative around mental health from a disease-only conversation to one about how we can realise our full potential. Some of the speakers include Jahnavi Phalkey (Science Gallery Bengaluru), Prof L.S. Shashidhara (National Centre for Biological Sciences), Dr. Shyam Bhat (LiveLoveLaugh Foundation), Vikram Bhat (Bangalore International Centre), Jwala Narayanan (Cognitive Neurology Clinic), India, Kavya Murthy (Foundation for Arts and Health India) and Rahul Dravid (cricketer and former coach, Indian National Cricket Team), among many others.
The event lineup is diverse, ranging from talks about dementia, suicide prevention, digital mental health, and the impact of music and physical activity on the mind to an art exhibit that dives into the historical, social and cultural complexities of tobacco use in the country, a photographic exhibition showcasing the journeys of sex trafficking survivors and a book stall featuring titles that promote well-being. “We are tackling some very important core themes like addiction, chronic illness and dementia…All these are
being anchored by NIMHANS faculty,” elaborates Natasha Joshi, Associate Director, Portfolio, RNP. “But we’re also looking at things around well-being and flourishing, grounded in clinical practice science, to give that diversity and balance,” she adds.
Germination of idea
The foundation for this festival was laid several years ago, stretching back to 2016. “Initially, this started as a research, a pure science kind of approach,” says Dr. Pratima Murthy, Director, NIMHANS. “We were looking at understanding mental disorders, not just in-depth, individual mental disorders, but what is called cross-diagnostics because we do know that there are shared etiologies and vulnerabilities,” she says. According to her, while categorical approaches to disease have been somewhat limited, today “we have tools to understand mental disorders, not just in terms of their clinical manifestations, but also from the genetic point of view, the imaging point of view.”
The idea, she says, was to look at similarities and differences between disorders which are more commonly prevalent, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addictions, dementia and obsessive-compulsive disorders. “The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) funded the initial set of studies, and we worked with NCBS to look at these four or five disorders in great detail,” says Dr. Murthy. This, in turn, led to a study in which cohorts of family members — one of whom was affected by a mental condition and one who was not — were closely studied “to try and understand complex questions around these disorders,” she says.
In July 2023, the Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind (CBM) was launched at NCBS to support this research so that the subjects could be followed for a much longer period. “I think this is an example of how institutions looking at very basic problems are joining hands with those doing medical research to try and create an interface from which knowledge can arise,” says Prof. Raghu Padinjat, NCBS. “This can then be applied to solutions that can be used in society.
Science and Society
This intersection between science and society is especially of interest to RNP. Hence, they expanded the mandate of CBM also to include a public festival, says Nilekani. “It is very different when you’re in a clinical sort of setting and when you’re in a public festival setting with all this expertise in the open domain.” Joshi also explains why the festival needed to be a more inclusive event. “In conversations with the team at NIMHANS, we decided that lived experience was a very important part of all of the work that they’re doing. They were very keen to build that bridge between lived experience and research,” she says. “Ultimately, scientific research has to interact with practitioners.” By May this year, it was formally decided to open it up to the public, and a call for proposals went out in July. “We got about 277 applications,” says Joshi. “We looked at emerging themes from these proposals and shortlisted 40 different sessions led by community members, including medical experts, researchers, NGOs, and artists.”
First of its kind
Mannotsava, which will be preceded by an invite-only, one-day neuroscience research symposium at NCBS on October 25, is the country’s first such event. “I’m very excited about this and hope it will be a continuing feature,” says Nilekani, who believes that a forum like this, which brings together various facets of mental well-being, could become “a bridge between the science and issues that society faces.”
She says she is thrilled that philanthropy for mental health is garnering traction in the country. Often, too often, the mental health narrative has been dominated by the Western world, in her opinion. “We need a global south perspective… research, data, everything coming out of here, especially India. So that’s another aspect that makes us proud here: we are doing this domestic cutting-edge research that will benefit our people in the long run.”
The importance of having an open dialogue about mental health issues in a country where roughly one in seven suffer from some mental disorder is not lost on the organisers — not just to reduce the stigma around mental disorders that persists but also to understand how to flourish as human beings, build resilience and raise awareness about empathetic care and support. After all, all of us, simply from the fact that we have a brain and mind, are susceptible to mental health issues, believes Dr. Murthy. “Even just day-to-day situations can lead to mental distress,” she says. “The world is full of challenges, and being able to talk about them also means learning how to be resilient.”
When and where
Mannotsava will be held at the NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bengaluru, on October 26
and 27, 10 a.m. onwards. To know more, log into https://www.nationalmentalhealthfestival.com/
