Mental Health Legislation first Mental Health Policy 2014[9] and passing the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 superseding the Mental Health Act, 1987.[10]
Programmatic attempts were made to create additional capacity for the mental health workforce through establishing centers of excellence, emphasizing community-based mental healthcare, and expanding District Mental Health Programmes—DMHP under the National Mental Health Programme—NMHP.[11,12]
Mental disorders contribute not only to significant morbidity and disability but also add an economic burden to the country. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6482705/)
The Government of India has taken various policy-level initiatives to deal with the mental health situation in the country. In October 2014, the National Mental Health Policy was framed with the vision “to promote mental health, prevent mental illness, enable recovery from mental illness, promote destigmatization and desegregation, and ensure socio-economic inclusion of persons affected by mental illness by providing accessible, affordable and quality health and social care to all persons through their life-span within a rights-based framework”(Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India 2014). The Government of India passed Mental Healthcare Act in 2017 which supersedes the Mental Health Act, 19873. The National Mental Health Programme(NMHP) has already been running in the country since 1982, with the addition of the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) in the year 1996. State governments have also taken various initiatives to deal with the mental health situation. The state mental health authority has been established across states in India5. In 2014, the The government of Karnataka launched the “Manochaitanya Programme” with the aim “to integrate mental health care in all public health-care institutions-eg, all taluk (administrative divisions in districts of India) hospitals, community health centres, and primary health centres of states”(Manjunatha and Singh 2016). The Government of Andhra Pradesh is also planning to set up mental health clinics in all the government hospitals across the state6. The Government of Delhi intends to set up School clinics in all the government schools across the state, which will have medical staff including mental health professionals7 (https://csd.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/docs/ICT India/Papers/ICT_India_Working_Paper_60.pdf).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6482705/