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Submitted by PatientsEngage on 16 May 2016

iCall, a psychosocial helpline started by Tata Institute of Social Sciences, provides the crucial support to callers facing mental health problems. An interview with Paras Sharma, programme coordinator, iCall, who states that access to mental healthcare is pitiably scarce in India.  

When and why did you feel the need to set up a Helpline?

The need for setting up something like iCALL has always been there and even with iCALL around now, it is not like there is no need for more such services. For us at the School of Human Ecology, we started a Master's Programme in Counselling to address the shortfall of trained and qualified mental health professionals in India, in the year 2009. I was part of this pilot batch as a student. 

In 2012, two faculty from the School, Dr Sujata Sriram (who now serves as the Dean of the school) and Aparna Joshi (who is currently a centre chairperson at the school), thought of starting a free counselling service that could be accessed by one and all. The idea was to set up a free counselling centre that one could walk in to. The idea of starting a helpline instead, came from the Institute's Director – Prof Parasuraman, who provided us with the modest seed money, four telephone lines and the basic infra needed to start the helpline, and we haven't looked back since. 

The need is basically the fact that most people in India don't have access to mental healthcare. Stats say that 20-30% of people who go to PHCs are actually bringing in complaints that pertain to Common Mental Disorders. The government's own statistics say that the treatment gap for mental illness is almost 50 per cent. On the other hand the availability of trained and qualified mental health professionals is scarce, and limited to only big cities and towns. That is what drove us to start iCALL.

What is the nature of calls do you get on iCALL?

We call ourselves a psychosocial helpline, meaning that we don't just limit ourselves to issues related to the person's psyche (internal variables), but also related to the sociopolitical context within which the individual is located (external variables). As a result, we do not just receive calls pertaining to the area of suicide or mental health, but we receive calls from people across ages, gender identities, sexual orientation, language, and issues. 

How many calls do you receive per day?

This is something that has grown exponentially over the last four years. When we started off, getting 200-300 calls a month was a good return. Now we get anywhere between 30-50 calls on an average day, and hundred or more on a day we get some media attention. Growth in usage over emails has been even more dramatic. We now get 150-200 mails a month, up from less than 5 mails a month in the first year.

Who are most of your callers? Is it possible to draw up their profile?

We get calls across age groups and issues, but mostly these are individuals between the ages 11-40 years. We get an equal distribution of male and female callers, and about 1-2% of callers who do not conform to the gender assigned to them at birth. About a third of our callers are Mumbai based. One-fifth come from rest of Maharashtra, while anywhere between two-fifths to half of the callers are from the rest of India. Of late, we've been getting twenty to thirty calls from Non-resident Indians or Persons of Indian origin living abroad.

Have you all conducted any study to establish a pattern of callers or requirements?

We analyze our data on a monthly basis and we publish a report on an annual basis. The same can be found on the link mentioned earlier.

Is it possible to measure the success rate of iCALL?

It's hard to measure the efficacy of counselling in itself, let alone iCALL. One of the signs that the helpline is doing well, for us, is the growth in the proportion of repeat callers each month. Earlier we had 20-30% people calling us back. Now it's 50-60%. Another sign is the number of people coming to us as a result of positive reviews shared by other users/survivors. 

Word of mouth contributes 10-15% of our total calls in any given month. This, in current terms, means 100 to 150 calls a month, which is great. The third indicator for us is also the verbatim feedback that we receive from our clients. We are also planning to undertake a comprehensive review of the work we have done in the last four years, as well as chart out our future plans soon. That too should help us measure the efficacy of the work we have done.

Who should call in times of mental health crisis? Should it be the person affected, or a family member, or a friend?

It’s best if the person in distress themselves call us. Friends and family can call, but they will be given suggestions to help at their level or to help convince the affected person to reach out to us. 

What can they expect from the call? Would it be possible to narrate a case briefly, where the crisis was successfully diffused?

I won't be able to narrate a case, as that would go against confidentiality and anonymity. More so, we don't limit ourselves to one particular kind of issue, so a case study would give a false impression that our work is limited to only these kinds of cases.

Helpline Contact

iCALL helpline number: +91-022-2552 1111 (8am-10pm Mon-Sat)

iCALL email ID: icall@tiss.edu

Some of the issues iCALL tries to address: violation of rights, relationship problems, fear, parenting concerns, feelings of depression and sadness, abuse and violence, matters concerning sexuality and gender, infertility and conception issues, marital problems, matters concerning senior citizens, conflicts, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, workplace stress, mental distress arising out of terminal illness and addiction. The helpline also offers career and academic counselling.