OBUKA envisions Individuals, Organisations, and Communities free of Mental Health Stigma, and nurtures a culture of Mental Well-being. Our program supports Women and Children to live free from distress and abuse and proactively promotes awareness to empower people to seek support if facing domestic violence or abuse. OBUKA achieves this through school and corporate programs that involve awareness, acceptance, and action.

Our focus is ‘Prevention of Abuse’ through Awareness and Interventions.

OBUKA provides emotional support through first-line befriending and counseling services by trained volunteers and professional counselors.

OBUKA works closely with a network of organizations to provide police intervention, shelter, Legal aid, medical aid, mediation, and counseling, dependent on the needs of the survivor.

Our interventions include:

● Working with Neeva Foundation to carry out intergenerational awareness programs

● Group sessions for women employees facilitated by mental health professionals and survivors

● Online sessions to reach people during isolation due to Covid-19 through programs such as:

❏ Physical distancing-not social distancing: Family Quiz night in March 2020

❏ Session with a lawyer on Wills and Succession in April 2020

❏ Expressive art workshop for teens to share their feelings about the lockdown in April 2020

● Psychometric assessment to screen for mental health concerns and enable the Management to support staff who may be facing Domestic Violence, anxiety or showing high levels of stress

Domestic Violence Survivor Support, Program Manager is Fiona Martin.

Fiona has assisted over 55 women in 3 years to be empowered to successfully change their lives ensuring they are completely free from violence. Fiona is a business process re-engineering professional and change management specialist. Having worked with various organizations in India and the Middle East, she has over 40000 hours of process review and improvement experience. Giving up the corporate world to work with women facing violence was the turning point in her life. She has completed a B.A Psychology, trained as a befriender, and worked 60+ hours under counselor mentorship.

Fiona has been working with women and children facing violence since 2015 when she had her first case. A survivor herself, Fiona realized the need to bring all possible support under one roof to reduce the continued trauma of a survivor.

Work till date (since 2017) related to Violence against women:

● Worked with over 200 survivors

● One of the founding members of Bembala, a center for women/children facing distress

● Co-founder of Chop Chop Boys, a fun cooking program to enable gender equity where boys teach boys to cook everyday food

● Ideation and running of Bol Sakhi, a program to encourage dialogue about Domestic Violence. Initiated in 2019, 5 Bol Sakhi programs have been conducted.

References

1. Vandana Suri, Founder - Neeva Foundation / Taxshe (+91 9035013871)

2. Beaula Jemima, Lawyer and Founder - Leanonme (+91 9845670279)

Awareness, Acceptance, Action is OBUKA’s mantra which is apt to tide over these times of uncertainty.

OBUKA’s ‘Drive Away the COVID Blues’ Program helps to:

Develop AWARENESS of self and connect to a place of inner peace

Build ACCEPTANCE of the reality and take charge of the controllable

Take ACTION towards coping and remaining calm in the face of stress

The Program includes :

● Virtual Group activities - antakshari, coffee mornings, QUIZ Night, JAM, Expressive Art

● One-on-one Tele-counseling sessions and Befriending

● Crisis intervention and referral

● Group conversations to cope with emerging stressors - Parenting during a crisis, Managing

work overload, Webinars

● Community initiatives for crisis intervention and support for members who have been

quarantined and other community members to reach out to

Our programs for families include open programs and schools. Some of what we cover

includes positive parenting, individual and family counseling and support to enable close-knit

supported family units.

Photo by Stephen Paris from Pexels

OBUKA promotes a culture of Mental Well-being in the school environment. Our program supports students; staff - teaching, non-teaching, management; and parents.

Students spend the majority of their time in school. This is, therefore, the ideal place for all types of learning to occur, including mental health education to destigmatize mental health issues and to improve resilience. Mental health conditions account for 16% of the global burden of disease in people aged 10–19 and the consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood.

Our School Wellness Program incorporates the 5Ts for Mental Health Education

1. TALKING about Mental Health to students, staff, and parents

2. Providing appropriate TRAINING for teachers and staff

3. Incorporating Mental Health into TEACHING

4. Providing helpful TOOLS for students

5. TAKING CARE of teachers

Our Program is designed to...

● Build resilience against adversity

● Provide the skills and confidence to self-seek help for early intervention

● Foster a friendly, respectful, safe and inclusive school environment

● Establish proactive policies addressing wellbeing and inclusion

● Foster strong partnerships with students, parents, carers, community

● Recognize and intervene when students experience problems related to well-being

Why schools?

● Ease of reaching adolescents

● Students spend one-third of their time in school

● Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age but most cases are undetected.

● Schools are better equipped to recognize when intervention may be required.

● One in six people are aged 10–19 years

● Mental health conditions account for 16% of the global burden of disease in people aged 10–19

● The consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood

OBUKA aims for workforce mental health promotion initiatives with a more comprehensive and customized approach, which acknowledges the combined influence of personal, environmental, organizational factors on employee psychological well-being.

We envision enabling individuals, organizations, and communities to nurture a culture of

mental well-being.

OBUKA’s Workplace Wellness Program uses a 3 pronged approach:

1. ‘Mental Well-being Awareness’ under which we address sensitization, stigma, strategies of stress management and promotion of help-seeking behavior

2. ‘Learning and Development’ which encompasses well-being policies and practices, a needs analysis based customized L&D calendar covering workshops on Leadership, Communication, Organization Culture, Emotional Intelligence, and Building collaborative teams.

3. ‘Support’, one on one counseling sessions, group sessions, peer support and to develop

Befrienders/well-being champions within the organization

This approach encompasses 4 Areas of Focus and 2 Supporting Initiatives :

  

Areas of Focus	Mental Health Stress and Coping Communication Organization Culture
Supporting Initiatives	Counseling ( 1-1, group)                  Training and mentoring of befrienders

Why the workplace?

• 71% of Indians still use terminology associated with stigma to describe mental illnesses.
• Millennial Indians spend far more time at work (+20%) than their counterparts in 25 other countries due to job insecurity, challenging projects, ambitious targets, tough deadlines, heavy performance pressures, and the much-dreaded appraisals.
• Research indicates that 36% of the larger Indian companies and 25% of the multinationals do not have a complaints committee
• Most people spend about one-third of their lives in their workplace

In Corporate India :

42% of private-sector employees have general anxiety or depression

46 % of the workforce suffers from some form of stress

200 million suffering from hypertension

References :

Article by Express Health Care on "Corporate health in India and its economic impact"- Link

Paper published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry on "Suicide: An Indian Perspective" - Link