Identity Inclusion

I work on mitigating mental health issues among the youths through addressing inequality as social determinants of mental health as psychosocial supporters. We do this by building inclusive leadership in the youth who then are  involved in helping families and institutions to becoming inclusive as psychosocial supporters and inclusion consultants working with NGOs, Corporates and Social Institutions. We train undergraduate students on psychosocial support skills through the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology of Dhaka University. They are then connected to families that need support, such as organizing regular recreation, accompanying patients to doctor’s visits, etc. 

Our aim is to create an inclusive world where the youth of our country are psychologically healthy, support people with disabilities and their families and are also involved in changing institutions to be inclusive.

Mental health is the most underfunded problem of the world. I have been unning a social business and doing consultancies to make organizations disability friendly to fund the psychosocial support services we provide. With the prize I will further develop a youth social work program  and a rehabilitation center which will do skill development and acccess free lance work to rehabilitate people with mental illness.   

My eldest sister has Epilepsy, which due to lack of awareness in Bangladesh resulted in her being excluded from school and who eventually developed Schizophrenia. This made me realize ‘exclusion’ is both a cause and consequence of bad psychological health. However I found no community based mental health service that addresses exclusion as a social determinant of mental health in Bangladesh. At the age of 27 I resigned from my full-time job in 2015, and spent all my savings in covering the operational costs of Identity Inclusion. I organized youth volunteers and partnered with the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, Dhaka university to train them to provide psychosocial support to people struggling with mental health stigma.

Despite the many hurdles that comes with being a young woman in charge of an organization, that too on stigmatized topics like mental health, I have not given up.  

I want to set up a skill development and employment-based rehabilitation center for people facing mental health stigma in Bangladesh. Where youth social workers will work with people with mental illness who are recovering but have been excluded from educational and workplaces due to their condition, to develop their skills and find employment. 

The majority of the world’s youth live in Southeast Asia, 30% of Bangladesh’s population are the youth, this demographic dividend, our most productive population face a rapidly changing exclusive world. Hate crimes are rising, poor people are getting poorer, suicides rates and depressions is increasing. Millennials grew up witnessing a major shift in technological advances, in a breakdown of traditional values and a transition in value systems and apathy towards environmental exploitation. Mental health and behavioural problems are the major source of adjustment problems in our youth they pose barrier for socio-economic integration for over one billion youths worldwide. The youth are in search of doing purposeful work that is not only socio-economically fulfilling but morally as well in a mentally healthy and inclusive environment. 

At Identity Inclusion we take in 20 youth volunteers every year and by building inclusive leadership in the youth who then are  involved in helping individuals and institutions to becoming inclusive as psychosocial supporters and inclusion consultants working with NGOs, Corporates and Social Institutions. As social workers they are not only directly involved in addressing exclusion of people in society as a social determinant of mental health, they empower people struggling with mental health stigma. 

Our intervention targets not just the persons with psycho-social disability themselves, but their environment, i.e. the stakeholders. In a country where both specialists and hospitals are in short supply, youths as non-specialist front line of mental health services could act as a critical support base for individuals and families dealing with psycho-social disabilities. We develop a youth cohort who are trained and experienced to provide frontline, primary mental healthcare support, with referral resources to secondary and tertiary care every year. At the same time, we raise awareness, knowledge and capacity to support individuals with psycho-social disabilities at the family and institutional level. 

My approach is to focus on the social determinants of mental health, which is the first of its kind in Bangladesh. My initiative is engaging and supporting families, equip the youth, with the skills and technology they need to advocate for more practical awareness. This is crucial as mental illnesses are now considered conditions of the young and 30% of Bangladesh’s population are made up of youths, making them a demographic dividend. They are in-turn helping the inclusion of the youth population facing mental health stigma and exclusion to be integrated into society. 

In the past five years, my organization has been conducting support group meetings with 5-10 people attending it every month, trained over 2000 volunteer psychosocial supporters, working to provide psychosocial support and 20 youth-based organizations reaching 100,000 youths. Via online channels, I have utilized the youth in promoting awareness on mental health issues like suicide prevention, depression, masculinity and several other fundamental mental health issues reaching thousands of youths in Bangladesh. In 2018 we ran a month-long online campaign with youth leaders from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to raise awareness on youth mental health. The videos had over 26,000 views each. Our youth volunteers have worked as research consultants with 3 major INGOs in Bangladesh in developing organizational and programmatic policies to be disability inclusive.