As a student of Women’s Studies and earlier, English Studies, Ayushi’s training has been to question the systemic oppression in the various pockets of society. While she was doing her MPhil, she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and that was her first interaction with mental health issues. Being a student at an otherwise socially supportive and status-quo questioning university, unfortunately, she had to face a lot of stigma when she came out with her mental health condition, with a handful of exceptions. That made her think that if such is the amount of stigma in such an academically sound and privileged university, then it could be so much worse at other places. In her own experience, what she realised was that mental health is not just an individual issue. It does not exist in a social vacuum. The power structures around us guide our mental health and its consequent deterioration (or lack thereof).

And while she was in conversations with Adishi about the need for more and more mental health awareness, she stumbled upon a very traumatic experience of mental health stigma, which triggered her to just open up the Instagram app and form Mental Health Talks India. A month later, Adishi joined her as the co-founder.

Adishi has also been dealing with mental health issues for some years now. Both of us often interacted about our struggles and talked about working together to raise awareness about mental health in India.

As an English literature and Gender Studies graduate, Adishi came face to face with the social inequalities existing in our society, and that laid the foundations of a kind of disillusionment, that later snowballed into and exacerbated her then latent issues related to relationships, childhood trauma, suicidal urges and hypersensitivity.

Now, three-plus years into therapy, she is more aware of her triggers and traumas and also feels a lot more equipped to deal with them. Her work at MHTI and Letters of Kindness is one of the major pillars on which her mental health journey stands.

Our personal journeys made us realise how a lot of the stigma we were facing was the result of the lack of mental health awareness in our country and thus came our labour of love.