There is much to be celebrated regarding the impetus to mental health in the 2025-26 Union Budget presented by Ms. Nirmala Sitaraman on 1st February 2026. A key highlight in the ₹1,06,530.42 crore to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is the setting up of NIMHANS 2.0 in North India. Dr Sitaraman said, “There are no national institutes for mental healthcare in North India. We will therefore set up a NIMHANS 2.0 and also upgrade National Mental Health Institutes in Ranchi and Tezpur as regional apex institutions.” Now that we have the money and state intent, the endeavour should be to aptly utilise it and create and ecosystem that is beneficial to the country and its people.
Which Psychology Are We Talking About?
Psychology disciplines across the globe are witnessing a consistent upward growth trajectory in terms of demand to seek admission and specialization, job openings and salary structures, demand for qualified professionals and psychological interventions. Within psychology, specifically mental health as a profession is seeing a sharp increase in interest. Mental health has made it to everyday vocabulary — and yet I must admit that perhaps amongst the top-ranking disciplines the career path in psychology, especially in India, is most treacherous.
Psychology represents the diverse theories, competing methodologies, and evolving technologies that shape the way we understand the human mind and behaviour. To better understand this ever-evolving discipline, we need to examine how our theories, methods, and tools have evolved over time, and how influential thinkers have contributed to the complexity we experience today. Even when we begin pondering upon the history and origins of our discipline, we encounter the realisation that this discipline did not develop from a single seed sprouting in one specific location. Different versions of modern psychology appeared at more or less the same time in a number of countries. Interestingly, these versions were not in communication with one another and at no time underwent a progressive fusion. Psychology in India continues to struggle in finding a firm footing as a discipline and profession.
NIMHANS in north India is certainly long awaited and is a push in the right direction – but this should also force us to take stock of the state of already existing training and education in Psychology. The courses are dated, the readings are inconsistent with the need, applicability is minimal.
Despite numerous curriculum revisions we have failed to create a robust course structure that bridges the industry-education gap, the content-skill gap and the curriculum-context gap. The years of psychology undergraduate and postgraduate studies are taking students further away from both their own emotional experience and cultural sensitivity.
The Myriad Woes of Psychology in India
After close to three decades spent in the study and practice of Psychology, I write to highlight the chaos in the discipline and the need for some alignment. We may have all the budgetary allocations, we may have the will, but we need concerted reflection upon the context, the need, the lacunas and the strengths and robust integration. There are some pressing issues that need attention.
Culturally Irrelevant Discourses
The discipline continues to suffer the post-colonial hangover.
Decolonising mental health is not a gentle reform; it is a radical overhaul, both personal and systemic (Stewart, Cammi and Wills, Madeline, 2024). It is about dismantling systems that silence and oppress us and about building a future in which sovereignty, cultural practices, and holistic well-being.
Colonisation has brought with it an imposed and false concept of western scientific superiority. This biased view has invalidated centuries of indigenous wisdom and healing practices, reducing them to footnotes in the dominant narrative of healthcare and causing irreparable harm to the discourse and practice in the field of mental health.
Within this context, the Eurocentric biomedical model of mental healthcare falls significantly short, failing to address the myriad cultural, spiritual, and communal factors essential to the mental well-being of humanity itself. The societal structures around us – capitalism, the lingering poison of colonisation, systemic racism – are not just a backdrop; they are active contributors to our mental distress. However, Edward Said’s critique exposes a ‘mental Orientalism’ at play when attempts are made to find ‘alternative’ mental health models. (Stewart, Cammi and Wills, Madeline, 2024).
A version of indigenous psychology that is based on simplistic binaries such as Indigenous vs Western, Local vs Global, or Self vs Other is bound to fail in achieving the goal of substantive decolonisation (Bharte & Mishra, 2023). Psychology doesn’t need cultural appropriations of the western theorisations, but an evolving understanding rooted in the experience of the individual.
A discipline will take root in a culture when its people can find theories that truly speak to their lived experience.
Resisting the Medical Model
A whole publishing industry, backed by an endless stream of RCTs and evidence-based medicine reviews (EBMS) in open access journals, is blaring the message of “filling the treatment gap” at the cost of our rights to inclusion — and despite criticism from the medical professionals, critical psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, human rights groups, women’s groups, LGBTI groups, and a variety of other stakeholders from around the globe, including all of us worldwide with lived experiences, that “treatment” leads to violations of our human rights. (Davar, 2018).
For the mental health revolution to take stronger roots in India there need to be more community driven and a more inclusive approach.
The mental health professionals must understand and weave in the role of family in distress as well as in healing. Important initiatives like peer support, psycho-education, community well-being programs, community led mental health interventions need to be implemented and sustained. Psychological distress cannot always be relived or even understood from an absolutist biological position.
The medical model, with its biological focus, may end up pathologizing what are actually rational responses to poverty, caste/ gender discrimination, and rapid urbanization.
Many Paths to Recovery: Celebrating Pluralism
Inclusion will be realized if all persons with disabilities live independently, enjoying respect, autonomy and dignity, and having access to a range of social services that will allow a person with a psychosocial disability to fully participating in society and take control of their own lives (Davar, 2018).
Theoretical pluralism is inherent to our understanding of the discipline of psychology – it provides a rich canvas but also leads to difficult choices and some confusion. The idea is not to aim towards a sanitised, liner, cause-effect understanding but to augment, promote and embrace a pluralistic framework.
The consistencies in the discipline of Psychology need not be theorization. We need consistency in terms of rigor, ethics, deep penetrative understanding of on-ground realities, adaptability, and sharp reflexivity. We as practitioners and educators in the discipline need to augment dialogue and pave the way for mutual learning and engagement of the East and the West – not drown ourselves in the debates of supremacy. There is a pressing necessity for developing a culturally sensitive and socially responsive science of human behaviour.
As opposed to the goal of Western scientific psychology to exercise control over other human beings and nature, what we need is to make conscious efforts for making our discipline a truly liberating enterprise by incorporating knowledge from those cultures where cooperation, mutual respect and trust, sacrifice, relationality, and plural subjectivities are valued and celebrated.
Needless to say, that homogenisation and domination of the knowledge sphere are not good for anyone in the long run, not even for those who benefit from it initially (Bharte & Mishra, 2023). The call for critical Indigenous psychology seems more representative of underrepresented and marginalized groups, giving new meaning to indigeneity. This is possible when the meanings of social justice, heterogeneity, and liberation aptly converge with the psychology of the historically oppressed (Sinha, Bharte & Mishra, 2025).
The Need for Individual-Family-Society-Environment Matrix
In a world often dominated by noise, complexity, an endless pursuit of more, and increasing disconnection, we must return to the simple yet profound ideas of connection, kindness, and caring for both the earth and each other. These might sound like simple ideas, but in the context we find ourselves, this shift in priorities demonstrates a radical reimagining of our future (Stewart, Cammi and Wills, Madeline, 2024).
While we are well aware of the impact of family and society on the individual, an important third aspect of the environmental impact needs active inclusion. The individual brings biological predispositions, psychological vulnerabilities and personal resilience; the society provides (or denies) the social support, cultural belonging, and economic stability needed to thrive; and the environment offers the physical backdrop—ranging from urban stressors to the healing effects of green spaces.
Understanding this matrix is vital because it shifts the focus from treating isolated symptoms to addressing systemic causes. When we view mental health through this lens, we see that personal well-being is inextricably linked to the health of our communities and the sustainability of our surroundings.
By balancing these three pillars, we move toward a more “whole-person” approach to wellness. It reduces the risk of isolation and depression. The environment, particularly our connection to nature, acts as the third critical pillar in this matrix. Exposure to green and blue spaces has been scientifically shown to lower cortisol levels, improve cognitive restoration, and reduce symptoms of anxiety.
When these three elements are in harmony, they create a feedback loop: a healthy environment encourages community interaction, and a supportive community empowers the individual to maintain their mental equilibrium.
Solastalgia emerges as a result of the degradation and degeneration of our natural environment. This feeling emerges when the environmental pillar of our well-being matrix is compromised. It isn’t just sadness about nature; it is a profound sense of loss regarding one’s place in the world. In this new paradigm, mental health is not a private burden carried by an individual, but a collective asset nurtured by the society and sustained by the environment. It is the shift from an individual-centred health model to a community centred one, where a person’s internal peace is seen as inseparable from the social justice of their community and the ecological health of their surroundings.
To truly reimagine wellness, we must recognize that a balance cannot exist in isolation within a fractured society or a dying landscape.
Education, Training, and Research
Over the last two decades of observing students graduating in Psychology I have felt a palpable difference in the first and final year students. The freshers seem to be full of enthusiasm, new ideas, curiosity and a desire to learn more about themselves and the world around them – they are looking for the bright light that their training in psychology will provide them to help illuminate the dark spaces within and make sense of the world around them – but by the end of the final year these same students look worn out – struggling to keep pace with the practical files, readings that seem to be talking about other people in faraway lands – but not themselves, and the foreboding of having wasted years in a discipline only to realize that the job opportunities in the field are even more disorganised than the study!
The education of psychology in India is suffering the outdated syllabus and pedagogy – research often lacks originality and firm cultural rootedness. The demand for the discipline is certainly on the rise – prompting an opportunity to make more centres and enrol more and more students – but this in no way is guarantying any quality or rigour. India stands at a decisive moment in the education and regulation of psychology. Despite well-intentioned reforms through NEP 2020, NCAHP Act, and RCI initiatives, unresolved jurisdictional and curricular gaps and a fragmented regulatory framework threaten to weaken the profession and hinder progress toward a unified mental health workforce (Chinchu, 2026).
The first five years in Psychology are not preparing you for the field! Psychology in India as a discipline continues to shrink and take recourse to western ideas and theories primarily due to the lack of research and innovation in the field in our country.
Research is institutionally fragmented, methodologically stagnant, and culturally misaligned. We have not been able to bridge the gap between global innovation and local relevance. Without deliberate investment in advanced methods, interdisciplinary collaboration, and indigenization of theory, psychology in India risks remaining academically peripheral and socially ineffective.
The growing mental health needs of the Indian population need more involved addressing and understanding with keen focus on inclusion, representation and participation.
The Confused Tangles of Licencing
A hundred years of Psychology in India and we are yet to come up with a consistent licencing policy for practicing psychologists. The Rehabilitation Council of India is currently the only body offering protected titles for psychologists – particularly Clinical Psychologists. Established in 1992 under the RCI act by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, it is limited in its scope to address the empowerment of Persons with Disability but its scope is limited strictly to disability and rehabilitation, not the broader mental health ecosystem.
The route to this licencing has earlier been through M. Phil. Clinical Psychology – which has now been scrapped under the NEP (2020) – and is now via PsyD or specific RCI accredited courses – both of which are not floated yet in the central universities in India. Everyone currently working as a clinical psychologist may not be RCI registered and all RCI registered professionals may not have an equitable training and expertise. The licencing for professional work in the field of psychology needs to amalgamate a consistent knowledge base, skill training and ethics. This is important both for the field to be recognized as well as for creating expectation and experience mapping.
Clinical (Rehabilitation) Psychology is not the only professional stream for psychologists. There is a need, in licensure, also to recognize the various specializations within Psychology. Psychology in India urgently needs a clear licensing framework—not only to protect clients from unqualified practice, but also to give trained professionals the recognition and accountability they deserve. Without licensing, the field risks dilution, while with it, psychology can stand as a regulated, respected profession
Everyone is a Psychologist?
Literally everyone is calling themselves a psychologist – that is how many mental health professionals we currently need! From people with a three-month diploma to doctors with MBBS training – everyone wants to dabble in the world of mental well-being. Reiki practitioners, pranic healers, aura readers, tarot experts along with psychology graduates, no-training-in psychology graduates – are all willing to call themselves counsellors, psychologists, psychotherapists.
All these practitioners may be playing a role in keeping stress/ anxiety/ other mental health conditions at bay – but we need to understand that they are not psychologists! This is both a result of confusing licencing policies as well as the growing need for ‘professionals’ in the field. The idea here is to not promote aby hierarchial arrangement of the professions or minimise the importance of everyone working towards a better mental health – but there certainly needs to be clarity in who then is a Psychology professional? This will help clarify the role, expectations and scope of the profession along with a clearer understanding of who isn’t a psychologist. Additionally, among the qualified practitioners in the mental health field there is little clarity of the different roles and responsibilities of a Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Mental Health Social Worker, and Counsellors.
Reimagining Wellbeing and Psychotherapy
The practice of psychotherapy needs to be contextualised in the cultural reality, not just in its theoretical and abstract understanding, but also in the application and techniques employed. The way a person makes sense of himself and others – his desires and fears – his negotiations with reality and fantasy – are bound to reflect deep imprints of the cultural matrix that he is and has been a part of.
Mental health problems are often viewed through a lens of stigma and shame. There is a pervasive belief that mental illness is a sign of personal weakness or a spiritual or moral failing. This leads many people to avoid seeking help, as they fear being labelled or ostracized. Many people in India turn to spiritual or religious leaders, family members, or friends for guidance, rather than seeking professional mental health care.
Traditional healing practices, Ayurveda, yoga, or even astrology, are often preferred (are also more readily available) over psychotherapy. Indians have long been involved in constructing explanatory systems for psychic distress and evolving techniques for its alleviation. (Kakar, 1982). This makes it harder for psychotherapy to be seen as a legitimate or effective approach to mental health. Reimagining well-being requires us to move beyond the narrow, clinical definition of ‘the absence of disease’ and instead view it as a flourishing ecosystem.
Psychology, as a distinct discipline, celebrated one hundred years in India in 2015 – and it not too early to emphasise that after being a hundred years old we need to promote a psychology that caters to the people of India, a discipline that celebrates diversity and connection, that understands social dynamics and is empathetic to experience being moulded by power hierarchies.
We need a discipline that is flexible enough to accommodate the many Indias that we inhabit, tight enough to know it’s aims, impact, and its craft, and rigorous enough to be consistent and evoke trust. The budgetary allocation is an acknowledgement of the immense and urgent need for augmenting psychology but we need to carefully evaluate the current state and the path this discipline will be pushed on.
References
Bharte, U. L., & Mishra, A. K. (2023). Working Through the Politics of Indigeneity: Decolonising Psychology by Way of a Dialectical Approach. Psychology and Developing Societies, 35(1), 22-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/09713336231152302
C, C. Psychology education in India faces fragmented regulation and overlapping curricula. Discov Educ 5, 124 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-01156-y
Davar, B. (2018). TCI ASIA Pacific: Engaging the Global Mental Health Movement in Dialogue. MAD in America: Science, Society and Social Justice. Oct. 2018. https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/10/tci-asia-engaging-global-mental-health-movement/
ET Online. (2026, February 1). Healthcare budget 2026: From mental health NIMHANS 2.0 to cheaper cancer drugs, healthcare takes centre stage. The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/healthcare-budget-2026-from-mental-health-nimhans-2-0-to-cheaper-cancer-drugs-healthcare-takes-centre-stage/articleshow/127836763.cms
Kakar, Sudhir, (1982). Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. Oxford University Press
Murrup-Stewart, Cammi and Wills, Madeline. (2024) “Enough Politeness: Decolonising Mental Health in a Society Oblivious to Its Colonial Wounds.” ReFrame: Global Mental Health from the Margins, no. 6, Oct. 2024, reframe2024.mhi.org.in/. Mariwala Health Initiative.
Rehabilitation Council of India. (1992). Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992 (Act No. 34 of 1992; amended 2000). Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.
Sinha, C., Bharte, U., Mishra, A.K. (2025). Critical Indigenous Psychologies in India: Striving for Human Liberation. In: Gao, Z.Z., Medved, M.I. (eds) Global Perspectives on Cultural Politics in Indigenous Psychology. Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96813-6_6
Surabhika Maheshwari
Dr. Surabhika Maheshwari is an academic, with nearly two decades of experience, Surabhika is passionately involved in the teaching and practice of Psychology. Her areas of interest include mental health, psychotherapy, environmental psychology, psychology of identity and self.
Surabhika has been an invited speaker at various prestigious platforms and has worked on projects with the World Health Organization (WHO), Child Rights and You (CRY), Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL). She has co-edited a special issue on Identity and Self for the Springer JournalPsychological Studies. Dr. Maheshwari teaches Psychology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi and is an Associate Professor there.