Aims

Minds for Health aims:

• To work alongside partner organisations in Low and Middle Income Countries to tackle global inequalities in access to mental healthcare.
• To engage the UK public and health workers in responding to global mental health challenges.

Our charitable objects are:

(1) To relieve the needs of children and adults who have mental illness, including their families and carers, particularly but not exclusively, living in North East India and to raise awareness of the issues faced by people living with mental illness.
 
(2) To research or support research into mental illness and disseminate the useful results to the public.

Activities

Minds for Health translates its objects into four core activities.

Developing services

Our financial support is centred around ensuring access to mental health services for the most disadvantaged affected by mental illness and seeking to relieve the poverty that often results from mental illness.

We support evidence-based health programmes working in particularly deprived communities and with vulnerable patient groups in Low and Middle Income Countries. To date we have developed facilities and services for children and older adults, preventative community-based mental health services and sustainable funding for free and subsidised healthcare.

Advocacy

Through talks, conferences and engaging with the media Minds for Health aims to increase understanding of global mental health challenges amongst the general public, health and social workers and students in related fields. Our aim is to inspire action not just awareness. 

Recently we have initiated a 10-part national advocacy campaign on Global Mental Health. 

Direct Support

Minds for Health believes that the human stories of those affected by mental illness and poverty must not be ignored in meeting the challenges of global mental health. An important part of our support is direct (human) support for those affected by mental illness, their families and carers or health professionals.

We provide direct support through our volunteering and elective programmes for students and qualified health workers, supporting local patient advocacy and a letter exchange programme connecting patients and staff of partner organisations to supporters in the UK.

Research and Cooperation

Effective solutions to global mental health challenges are undermined by a shortage of research and evidence from Low and Middle Income Countries. There are also major deficits in mental health skills and trained workers.

We seek to change this situation through supporting collaborative research with our partner organisations and developing local capacity for future research; organising professional exchanges and creating links to relevant academic or clinical institutions in the UK.