After centuries of stigmatizing mental health, the world is slowly waking up to the perils of ignoring it. In fact, if you have been active on any of the social media platforms, you have likely been bombarded with tidbits on mental health, advertisements for services, and self-help forums. Gather Nurture Connect, or GNC in short is a mental health platform that combines all of these into a single, holistic community with the singular aim of helping people improve their life experiences and achieve self-activation so that they can unleash their full potential in every aspect of their life.
But before we go further into talking about what GNC is, let’s take a quick look at the state of mental health in India as published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s Annual Report 2021-2022.
About 14% of Indians suffer from mental health disorders. In absolute terms, 197 million people in India suffer from mental health disorders. Among this number, 56 million are those who suffer from treatable forms of depression, and 38 million suffer from some form of anxiety.
Unfortunately, the Indian population is among the least underserved in the world by the mental health workforce. According to World Health Organization, India has only 3 psychologists or psychiatrists per 1,00,000 people.
The National Mental Health Survey of 2016 was the last ever such survey to be performed, and it reported that at least 9% of the people who suffer from mental health conditions in India require active mental health interventions on an ongoing basis.
Clearly, the present state of mental health in India is not very encouraging. The good news, though, is that people are increasingly willing to talk about mental health and in the urban areas at least, mental health interventions are not as stigmatizing as they may have been two decades ago. Still, a lot of ground needs to be covered. We at GNC believe that for a mass-scale change to occur in the area of mental health awareness and services in India, incremental gains must be made over a period of time. GNC is an attempt to realize this dream.
GNC’s founder, Cheelu Chandran, has been a practicing psychotherapist for more than two decades and she conceptualized GNC as a community of like-minded people who could support each other during the toughest times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as the world was reeling under the impacts of social isolation and persistent fear for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, Cheelu was trying to do her own bit to bring about some semblance of sanity using digital media. As a mental health warrior and a staunch advocate of mental health awareness, Cheelu understood that mental health issues are complex, and many people suffered simply because an unpleasant change had been thrust upon them, without any warning or preparation.
In its early months, GNC flourished as a space where people could celebrate their uniqueness, voice their personal stories, find friendship and camaraderie, and most importantly, find the support they needed to be able to connect better with themselves. In the following years, GNC has evolved to become a life-enhancement organization that addresses the constraining effects of trauma and conditioning, to help individuals discover their best selves. GNC helps put individuals on a path of self-activation so that they can live their best life.
So what really is GNC?
It is not your regular mental health delivery system. It is not a quick fix. It is a group of qualified, highly motivated, and passionate individuals who look at mental health as a fluid, complex and dynamic system, imperative for overall well-being. GNC understands that people change and that their needs, attitudes, behaviors, and desires change too. So, GNC offers a bouquet of services, designed with a lot of care and compassion, letting its clients choose how they want to approach their self-enhancement journey.
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