Manga, helpline and AI: India pilots BRICS’ mental health support network

Why in the News

A newly established BRICS Network of Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in mental health will be piloted by India, with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) acting as its coordinating centre. It answers a problem common to the grouping. Specialist psychiatric services sit in cities while the populations that need them live in rural or underserved areas. Stigma compounds that distance, because a diagnosis is widely treated as a mark against a family rather than as a condition requiring treatment. The tension is that no member can train its way out of the treatment gap at the pace the burden is growing, so the network is betting on health workers who are not specialists and on digital delivery instead of on more specialists.

What is the BRICS Network of Centres of Excellence in mental health?

1. What it is: A newly established network linking designated centres of excellence in mental health across BRICS member states, with India running the pilot.
2. Governance work: The coordinating centre is drafting the network’s governance protocol before the network begins operating.
3. What it exists to do: It carries approaches developed in one member state into the health systems of the others, adapted to local conditions.
4. Form of collaboration: Cooperation spans technical expertise, joint research, capacity building and knowledge exchange rather than monetary grants.

How does the network intend to close the treatment gap?

1. Task sharing: Basic mental health support, identification and referral become part of routine primary care, carried out by frontline and non specialist health workers upskilled for the role.
2. Digital telehealth: Telehealth platforms extend specialist input to hard to reach and rural populations without relocating the specialists themselves.
3. Integration into primary health centres: Mental healthcare is placed inside the existing primary care system rather than run as a parallel vertical service.

What does each member state bring to the network?

1. China, an educational manga against stigma: A comic produced to challenge the ideas of losing face and parental blame follows a schoolgirl whose grades collapse under severe anxiety and depression. Her recovery begins when a classmate helps her reach a community counselling clinic, and a doctor explains that a mental health condition, like a broken leg, may require treatment and support.
2. Indonesia, a round the clock helpline: A 24×7 digital platform responds to mental health crises and to suicide prevention.
3. South Africa, pictorial screening: Screening built around pictures and stories helps community health workers identify mental health concerns during home visits.
4. United Arab Emirates, simulation based practice: Clinical simulations and interventions built on virtual reality are in use.
5. Russia, technology assisted assessment: Physiological measures such as heart rate variability and galvanic skin response are combined with biofeedback and other non invasive technologies for assessment and rehabilitation.
6. India, tele mental health: India brings tele mental health services designed to plug into the existing healthcare system.

Why does India’s own burden make the exchange worth having?

1. Scale of the affected population: An estimated 197.3 million individuals in India were affected by mental health disorders in 2017.
2. The treatment gap: Between 70 per cent and 92 per cent of those affected went untreated.
3. Workforce shortage: India is short of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses, and most of the specialists it has are concentrated in cities.
4. Economic cost: Mental health conditions in India are projected to cause economic losses of USD 1.03 trillion between 2012 and 2030.

What will the network produce, and where does it stand?

1. Joint research agenda: Areas under consideration include screening assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital interventions, suicide prevention, biomarkers and epidemiological mapping of mental health conditions across BRICS countries.
2. Operational blueprints: The network is expected to share blueprints for digital platforms, tools and learning management systems.
3. A clinical compendium: A compendium of evidence based clinical protocols, culturally adaptable tools and public education strategies is envisaged.
4. Common rules of the road: Members will work on shared approaches to data privacy and cybersecurity, to the ethical deployment of AI and to mental health policies grounded in human rights.
5. Current stage: Centres of excellence, agreements and contact points are still being settled, and a multi country steering committee and technical working groups are being formed.

Conclusion

The network exists as an agreed structure and not yet as a delivery system. What each member has put in is a working method rather than money, so the open question is whether a method built for one country’s workforce and one country’s stigma survives transfer to another’s. The governance machinery is still being assembled, and until it is settled the network has no way to hold a member to a commitment. The marker to watch is the first pilot site at which a health worker who is not a specialist identifies a case and refers it without a psychiatrist in the building.

Back2Basics: National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences

1. Status: NIMHANS, located in Bengaluru, was declared an Institute of National Importance by an Act of Parliament in 2012.
2. Administrative home: It functions under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
3. Mandate: It combines patient care, teaching and research across psychiatry, neurology and neurosurgery, and trains mental health professionals for the country.
4. National service role: It is the nodal institution for Tele MANAS, the national tele mental health service launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2022.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] “BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”