Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States (Tele-MANAS) helpline of the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has reached a milestone by receiving over 100,000 calls since its launch in October 2022, marking a significant accomplishment towards providing quality mental healthcare for everyone across the country.

Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Health Minister, praised his compatriots for their accomplishment in a tweet.

On October 10, 2022, in recognition of World Mental Health Day, India’s National Telemental Health Programme was launched. Since its beginning, the service has worked to build an ecosystem for digital mental health that supports the development of new mental healthcare services. In the wake of COVID, there was a pressing need for a digital mental health network, and Tele-MANAS planned to fill that gap by granting access to mental healthcare services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even in the most isolated regions of the nation.

The government of India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched the nationwide service, which has now successfully completed its first six months of operation. It now has over 38 operational Tele MANAS Cells spread across 27 States and UTs that offer mental health services in more than 20 languages, with more than 1600 trained counsellors managing the front-line services. The majority of calls Tele Manas has so far received are from people who are depressed, stressed out, anxious about exams, having domestic problems, or having trouble sleeping.

The Tele MANAS initiative, which was announced by the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in the Union budget 2022–23 as a response to the mental health crisis in the nation, is a ground-breaking effort to enable people to call in for help with their mental health problems while maintaining their anonymity, reducing the stigma associated with mental illness in general.

The National Tele Mental Health Programme of India focuses on developing the nation’s mental health workforce through initiatives to build capacity, while also ensuring that mental health services are accessible to every household and every person without charge, focusing on the most vulnerable and underserved segments of society that might have gone unnoticed otherwise. Tele MANAS has turned a new page in accomplishing its ultimate goal of creating a strong digital mental health network across India by hitting the 1,00,000-user threshold in just six months.

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