When the team at Sangath, one of India’s leading mental health nongovernmental organizations, was looking for an innovative way to support young people struggling with anxiety and depression, they developed a solution that may seem counterintuitive at first: they encouraged India’s 16-to-24-year-olds to spend time online.
Based on research that shows narrative-focused mental health interventions can help people connect with their peers and develop new coping strategies, Sangath created Baatcheet, a web-based storytelling initiative that allows users to upload stories about navigating their own mental health journeys for others to read and learn from, with support from a peer counselor. The aim, said Project Director Dr. Pattie Gonsalves, is to use lived-experience examples to help equip young people with techniques for identifying coping strategies to deal with their mental health difficulties.
Baatcheet (Hindi for “conversation”) is an offshoot of another Sangath program that used a range of interventions, including online story collections, to break down the stigma around seeking mental health support. “The stories took on a life of their own and we realized they could be quite powerful in and of themselves,” Gonsalves explained. “We decided to see if we can target personal stories for a specific purpose. Can they help young people who are experiencing either depression or anxiety learn ways to cope better?”
Young people’s deteriorating mental health is a global crisis. Worldwide, one in seven people between the ages of 10 and 19 is experiencing or has experienced a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization, with anxiety disorders the most common.
Baatcheet – mental health stories by and for young people. Credit: Sangath
In India, the problem is especially acute. This is partly due to the country’s therapist deficit – India has 0.75 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, compared to at least six per 100,000 in high-income countries. Cultural and economic factors – including social stigma, a high youth unemployment rate, and lack of resources in schools and universities – also make many young people unwilling or unable to seek help with mental health issues.
It would be naive to think social media or technology is something that youth today can escape. So, it is important that we make an active and conscious effort to make the space as safe as possible.
A safe space online, designed by young people
While many studies warn that too much time online can have a negative impact on young people’s mental health, Gonsalves and her team felt it was important to “meet young people where they are.” Backed by 250,000 Canadian dollars of seed funding from Grand Challenges Canada, part of the global Grand Challenges network of initiatives for funding ambitious global health ideas, a team of mental health researchers, clinicians, artists, web designers, and youth advisers built Baatcheet with one goal: to amplify the mental-health benefits of online tech – in this case, fostering a greater sense of connectedness through personal storytelling – while eliminating the more harmful aspects of internet interaction.
The youth advisers decided users should be anonymous, and insisted there be no comments section, no chat function, and no system for accumulating “likes.” Instead, users can tag stories using a choice of “emotions,” including inspiring, relatable, and helpful. Other users can see how stories have been tagged, but not by whom or by how many people. “It would be naive to think social media or technology is something that youth today can escape,” said 21-year-old Eshita Razdan, one of Baatcheet’s counselors. “So, it is important that we make an active and conscious effort to make the space as safe as possible.”
The platform was also designed to democratize access. The website is available in Hindi and English, two of India’s most common languages. Building Baatcheet to run on the web rather than as a smartphone app ensured more people could use it. Browser-based tech uses lower bandwidth and does not need to be downloaded or updated. Users can log in and out on any device, in case their family shares a computer or a smartphone. “Things like that make a big difference in allowing young people to access technology on their own time,” said Gonsalves.
Dr. Pattie Gonsalves, Project Director at Sangath, speaks at an event. Credit: Sangath
All the stories on the platform are curated, with youth advisers checking to make sure they match the themes of anxiety or depression and deciding if a story needs to be signposted with trigger warnings flagging content readers might find disturbing. “One of the (other) criteria that we looked for was that the stories should talk about the coping journey,” said Navvya Rahate, 19, a youth adviser who helped design and curate the site. “They have to have a sense of hope and resilience, and a sense of some action that the writer took to deal with or manage their mental health difficulties.”
Making mental health accessible to everyone
Some of the co-design team went on to become Baatcheet Buddies, peer counselors who bring in the human element that Gonsalves said is crucial to the program’s effectiveness. Each user is assigned a Buddy who schedules regular check-ins to get the user acquainted with the site and guide them toward stories that might reflect the issues they are struggling with.
“For many young people dealing with a mental health crisis, if they go to a parent or a school counselor, the response isn’t always the most helpful or understanding,” said Razdan, who worked as a Buddy and has lived with anxiety and depression since her mid-teens. “They can be much more comfortable speaking to someone who’s in a similar age group about their deepest, darkest problems.”
She said much of the three-day training to become a Buddy focuses on recognizing the signs that a user needs more in-depth mental health support. Anyone going through a serious mental health or safeguarding issue – such as abuse or suicidal ideation – is directed to a psychologist on the team, to one of India’s free helplines, or to Sangath’s own counseling service.
We realized there is a huge barrier to getting help – it’s expensive, confusing, scary. We saw the opportunity to make access to mental health as easy as possible, so no one would have to struggle alone.
This free, confidential, one-to-one telephone helpline is partly funded through the Brave Together program launched in India in 2022 by global cosmetics firm Maybelline with the aim of making mental health support accessible to everyone. “We realized there is a huge barrier to getting help – it’s expensive, confusing, scary,” said Julie Delazyn, Global Head of Brand Communications at Maybelline New York. “We saw the opportunity to make access to mental health as easy as possible, so no one would have to struggle alone.”
The $10 million global initiative saw Maybelline teams reach out to local NGOs focused on mental health, specifically looking to partner with organizations that offer support through phone or text lines – two communication methods young people are particularly comfortable using, Delazyn noted. Through their partnership, Sangath was able to hire and train more counselors to answer calls from people seeking help, while Maybelline regularly runs localized ads to let people know the service is there if they need it.
Julie Delazyn, Global Head of Brand Communications at Maybelline New York, pictured with Anil Soni, CEO of the WHO Foundation. In 2024, their organizations partnered to increase access to mental health services worldwide. Credit: WHO Foundation
The power of sharing and talking
The two-year Baatcheet pilot phase concludes later this year, and the team is currently analyzing the results. The hope is to get more funding to conduct a larger evaluation study and scale the project to reach more young people, as well as their parents and carers, who might benefit as they try to understand and navigate their loved ones’ mental health challenges.
Even before the results are in, Gonsalves said early signs show the power of storytelling is already making a difference to how young people approach and take care of their mental health. “Something very encouraging that we have learned from some of the university-aged users is that they were reading stories and then getting together to discuss them with each other,” she said. “They’re sharing and talking, and that’s what we want.”
WHO Foundation