Tele MANAS – Prioritising Mental Health

On World Mental Health Day (October 10, 2022), the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched the Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States (Tele-MANAS) initiative, a 24-hour mental health service to improve access to mental healthcare throughout India.
How?
The mental health crisis exacerbated by COVID–19 pandemic sparked a need to develop a digital mental health network. The Government of India, as a result, introduced the National Tele Mental Health Program (NTMHP) in the Union Budget 2022–23.
- Tier 1: Made up of state Tele-MANAS cells with trained counsellors and mental health professionals.
- Tier 2: Specialists from the District Mental Health Program (DMHP)/Medical College resources and/or e-Sanjeevani.
- 51 State/UT Tele MANAS cells and 5 regional coordination centers are available as of now.
Tele-MANAS in collaboration with other services such as National Tele-Consultation Service, e-Sanjeevani, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, health and wellness centers, mental health professionals, and emergency psychiatric facilities, will provide specialized care covering a wide range of mental health and illness incorporating all available infrastructure. About nine hundred Tele MANAS counsellors have received training from NIMHANS.
Key Features
- The key objective behind the program is to provide mental healthcare services to the most inaccessible and difficult-to-reach regions.
- Once enabled in 20 states and union territories, the program will be extended to the remaining parts of India.
- Once the callers are through with the interactive voice response system (IVRS), they will be attended to by qualified counsellors.
- Callers could be redirected to specialists such as clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, and psychiatric nurses.
- For one-on-one counselling, a caller could be invited to a primary care facility or a health and wellness center.
- The tele-MANAS program will form the digital component of The National Mental Health Program and District Mental Health Program.
- The nodal center for the program’s execution will be The National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS) with technical support from IIT Bombay.
23 mentoring institutions which include PGIMER, AIIMS, and the Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences in Delhi, as well as five regional coordination centers will be involved.
The mentoring institutes are:
- AIIMS, Patna
- AIIMS Raipur,
- AIIMS Bhopal,
- AIIMS Kalyani,
- AIIMS Bhubaneswar,
- AIIMS, Nagpur,
- AIIMS Rishikesh,
- AIIMS and JIPMER, Mangalagiri,
- AIIMS, Jodhpur,
- PGIMER, Chandigarh,
- Hospital for Mental Health, Ahmedabad,
- Inst. of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour Bambolim Goa,
- KGMU Lucknow,
- IHBAS, Delhi,
- IGMS, Shimla,
- Psychiatric Diseases Hospital, Govt. Medical College, Srinagar,
- LGBRIMH, Tezpur,
- NIMHANS, Bengaluru,
- IMHANS, Kozhikode
- IMH, Chennai,
- IMH, Hyderabad,
- CIP Ranchi
The hotlines to reach the mental health helplines are 14416 and 1-800-91-4416.