Policies of Care: Mental Health and the Workplace
VIEW EVENT DETAILSTuesday, 8 October, 6:00pm

80% of Indian workforce report high levels of mental health issues and stress in 2022.
39% of these individuals were wary of seeking treatment due to societal stigma.
4 in 10 Indian government and corporate employees cite toxic workplaces as the biggest cause of burnout, distress, depression, and anxiety.
These statistics are but a small example of a growing mental health crisis faced by the workforce in many South Asian countries. A combined lack of separation between work and personal life, high stress, and long working hours has led to a rapid decline in the quality of life and mental well-being of millions of employees. People from lower socio-economic backgrounds face a deepened level of stress: working conditions, long hours, time away from family, and meagre wages adding to the problems. Complicating factors include disability – many individuals find themselves out of a job or discriminated against due to stigma – and gender. While both men and women face high levels of stress, women bear the brunt of domestic responsibilities, effectively performing several jobs at once - mother, daughter, family backbone, and employee. Issues such as unequal pay, caregiving responsibilities, and gender-based violence and harassment are some of the leading causes of women’s mental health issues.
Workplaces should offer care, but are notorious for deepening stress further. Government labour laws often allow companies to exploit their employees in order to maximise profits to the company, at the expense of the mental health of their workers, particularly in the informal sector. Legal recourse does exist: under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, every Indian has the right to work without facing discrimination. Under the umbrella of employment, every Indian has the right to equal opportunities, with a percentage of all governmental positions kept aside for disabled people. Similarly, the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 follows similar guidelines, stating that every individual has the right to access mental healthcare, protection against discrimination, and the right to legal aid. These Acts, in theory, ensure that no one can be fired or removed from work for mental health issues, nor for any disabilities they may possess, and are a massive step forward in legally quantifying what employees are owed by their employers.
To what extent, then, is it possible for employers to protect the rights of their workers? Creating grievance councils, anonymous reporting mechanisms, and even setting up a therapy services for employees are some ways in which this can be done, but to what extent can they really make a difference? What are the practical steps that can be taken towards creating safe and sensitive workplaces, particularly in India, where the work culture across field and sector tends to prioritise speed over health, and the institution over the individual? What legal provisions exist for mental healthcare at work, and how often are these implemented? Finally, what are the specific types of stressors inherent to different types of organisations - formal, informal, corporate, and smaller scale? Join us for Policies of Care: Mental Health and the Workplace, where we explore these questions in depth. Our panelists are Dr Soumitra Pathare, Director, Centre for Mental Health, Law and Policy, Lakshmi Sreenivasan, Founder and Organisational Development Consultant, LS Learning Systems, and Rachana Iyer, Head, Corporate Social Responsibility, IDFC First Bank, and moderator Arjun Kapoor, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Mental Health, Law and Policy.
Our series on mental health is now in its fourth season. In the past, we have looked at mental health and social fabrics, and how our social realities in India shape our sense of self; our identity; and our mental well-being. We have also looked at addiction, disorders, the impact of the pandemic on specific populations, art and creativity – you can learn more here. This series is supported by the Raika Godrej Family Trust.
SPEAKERS

Dr Soumitra Pathare is a consultant psychiatrist, and the Director of the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy at the Indian Law Society, Pune, India. His primary interests are in the areas of suicide prevention, mental health policy, scaling up mental health services, rights-based care, and legislation.
In the past, he has provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, in drafting India’s new Mental Healthcare Act 2017, which takes a rightsbased approach to mental healthcare. He was also a member of the Mental Health Policy Group appointed by Government of India to draft India’s first National Mental Health Policy released in October 2014.
He has served as a WHO consultant in many low- and middle-income countries (Botswana, Seychelles, Lesotho, Samoa, Vanuatu, Eritrea) assisting them in drafting and implementing mental health legislation and national mental health policy.
Soumitra is also the co-director of SPIRIT (an implementation research project on suicide prevention funded by NIMH) and the co-lead on Outlive! (a youth suicide prevention project funded by Comic Relief, UK).

Lakshmi Sreenivasan is an OD consultant with more than 20 years of experience across multiple industry domains. She understands challenges that organisations face these days. Change is inevitable be it technology-led or due to the evolving workforce shifts.
She co-creates comprehensive, high-impact learning platforms with key stakeholders in the areas of a culture shift, competency mapping, change management, leadership, assessment & development centres. Beyond these, she also also facilitate organisational transformation through executive coaching & leadership development.

Rachana Iyer is the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at IDFC FIRST Bank - a world-class bank guided by ethics, powered by technology, and a force for social good.
She established the Bank’s CSR division and has been instrumental in scaling its impact.
Currently, Rachana heads FIRST IMPACT, the Social Good vertical at IDFC FIRST Bank. She also serves on the ESG Steering Committee, working on the social dimension of its execution. This includes employee volunteering, the Reach Out program for employee mental health and work around Diversity and Inclusion squad for the iBelong program of the Bank.
With experience working with change-makers across India, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, and the USA, Rachana’s unique expertise lies in driving the scale-up of the Bank’s programs, impact communications, and collaborating with business verticals to co-create high-impact initiatives. She is a strong advocate for enabling non-profits and social enterprises to think sustainably about impact and adopt hybrid/business models.
Outside her professional endeavors, Rachana is a writer and a certified deep-sea scuba diver, planning to log 100 dives this year alone across the world.

Arjun Kapoor is Program Director & Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy, Indian Law Society. He is a lawyer and psychologist with experience in human rights, access to justice and mental health. Arjun has facilitated the capacity building of over 3000 formal and informal stakeholders on the implementation of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, National Mental Health Policy, 2014 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Previously, he developed and co-led the Keshav Desiraju India Mental Health Observatory –a repository of data and information on mental health laws, policies & services to promote evidence-based policy for mental health in India. Currently, he co-leads Outlive – a youth suicide prevention programme which addresses urban youth suicide in Delhi, Mumbai & Pune. He also co-leads ENGAGE - an adolescent suicide prevention programme which trains public school teachers to identify, support and refer at-risk adolescents in Chhattisgarh, India in collaboration with the Directorate of Health Services and Department of School Education, Government of Chhattisgarh. Arjun has also co-led a project supported by the Policy Lab, Wellcome Trust to pilot creative tools such as serious games for obtaining policy insights on mental health policy from persons with lived experience, caregivers, community-based organizations and panchayats in Chhattisgarh.
OUTREACH PARTNERS
