Monica Kumar
Managing Trustee & Clinical Psychologist
An undergraduate from Delhi University, NIMHANS alumni with an MPhil. in Medical and Social Psychology and an Ashoka Fellow. She founded a citizen organization, Manas Foundation [2000], to take mental health work into the broader community, reaching out to marginalized and resource-poor segments, with a critical focus on women and children.
In 2007, Monica was awarded the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship in recognition of the inherent innovation in Manas Foundation’s approach towards plugging-in and co-creating mental health service delivery, generating awareness/sensitization as well as executing interventions for recovery and reform. She is also the recipient of The EdelGive: Social Innovation Award for her work with underprivileged women, using models of psycho-social care and rehabilitation. She serves on several significant boards such as the Taskforce for Women Safety under the Chairmanship of Hon’ble Lt. Governer, as an external committee members for the Department of Women and Child Development [DWCD], a member of the State Child Protection Society and is a member of the governing body of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme [ICPS]. Through her years of innovating, training and creating the space and receptivity of mental health in the communities, she has worked with a plethora of afflicted populations like children and women afflicted with sexual/emotional/physical abuse and violence, juveniles in conflict with the law, children trafficked for labor and sex work, reproductive and child healthcare clinics as well as with the other NGO and GO stakeholders, to build capacity and enhance the mental health taskforces. She has also successfully partnered with the NMHP in Rajasthan and augmenting the DMHP in Dausa district for greater acceptance, reach and impact of mental health care in the district. With such a diverse repertoire of skills and knowledge, she has endeavoured to create person-centric and system-centric change agents who are leading the change in mental health landscape of India.
Monica is in continuous dialogue with the government, CSOs, educational institutes and corporate to co-create a system that encapsulates a multi-tiered model of intervention on the pillars of positive-preventive-promotive methods in mental health care; to illicit awareness about mental health needs as well as management and alleviation of mental health disorders with a psycho-social approach. With her vision to inform and impact policy so as to bridge the gap between the service-provision and service-implementation, she has been instrumental in defining the guidelines for mental health needs and child care and protection policies for the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights [DCPCR] and also coauthored a report on Women’s safety in National Capital Territory of Delhi highlighting the mental health aspects of the same.
