Foundry Conversations Podcast Episode 3: Mental Health Care in India with Rashi Vidyasagar
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Episode Description:
Rashi Vidyasagar is an Acumen Fellow and the co-founder of The Alternative Story, a mental health care organization based in India. In this episode, Rashi shares about her own mental health story, the challenges she wrestles with as a leader in the sector, and an inspiring vision for justice and equity.
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What is Foundry Conversations?
Foundry Conversations is an initiative created by members of The Foundry at Acumen Academy. We chat with leaders like you who are tackling the world’s toughest challenges. Together, we explore the most critical issues in their communities, how they navigate this complex moment in time, and what moral leadership means to them. You’ll get an inspiring glimpse of their vision for a better world, and practical ideas for creating the change that matters most to you.
Transcript: English
GUEST: Rashi Vidyasagar
HOST: Daisy Rosales
Podcast Intro
Welcome to Foundry Conversations. This podcast is brought to you by a global community of builders and innovators committed to a meaningful, positive impact. We chat with leaders around the globe like you, who are tackling the world’s toughest challenges. In this space, you’ll hear guests share about the most critical issues in their communities, how they navigate this complex moment in time, and what moral leadership means to them.
Rashi: But for me, what was very important was my own personal journey and my own personal story. I am diagnosed with depression and anxiety myself. But even as an educated person, as somebody who had access to therapy, who was married to somebody who was in the field and married to a therapist, it took me a long time to accept that what I was going through was depression. What I was going through was anxiety. It wasn’t until I actually had an anxiety attack at work to finally go and seek help and get therapy, get medication.
And for me, that is what was most important in terms of what was stopping me from accepting the fact that I had a mental health issue. And for me to solve that problem was the first step that I wanted to take in this journey of mine, of wanting to talk about mental health. And I think that, for me, is a very big reason why I do what I do.
Daisy: I’m Daisy Rosales, and this is the Foundry Conversations podcast. Today’s guest is Rashi, who’s the founder of the Alternative Story, based in India, offering mental health counseling to individuals and organizations. Rashi, welcome to the show.
So Rashi, you shared a little bit about your own journey with mental health, finding support and counseling and creating an organization to offer the same to others. Can you tell us about this space that you’ve entered into — mental health in India? What are some of the big challenges that you see as a leader of this organization?
Rashi: When you look at the country as it is right now, just the way we approach mental health in India. So much of stigma, there’s so much of conversations, there’s so much of ensuring that the person is labeled. It’s made sure that the person doesn’t get access to not only resources but employment. A lot of times, people are shunned away from their communities. They are made to leave homes, they are put into, now what we don’t call asylums, but for all purposes, it’s like a prison where people are made to go and stay.
So all of this is happening. And this also means that the profession of psychologists and psychiatrists takes a beating. So nobody wants to be a psychiatrist, nobody wants to be a psychologist because then they also have that stigma attached to them.
And you try to have this conversation with your parents, with your friends. It’s not a conversation they would want. But the moment you start having these real conversations about what it means, you just talk about feeling low or having a difficult time, and the immediate reaction often is to forget about it or immerse yourself into work.
And we feel that during the pandemic, people have started working 16 to 18 hours because, one, they have nothing else to do, but also because there is no other outlet for their sadness or their anxiety.
Daisy: In this really challenging context, in what ways are you trying to tackle some of these big challenges in the space of mental health? How is the Alternative Story your response to these challenges?
Rashi: So I think that each of these issues that I mentioned earlier, Alternative Story wants to have an offering or an option to kind of deal with this. So, for example, when I say there’s a lot of stigma attached, one of the things that we do is that most of our people in the team have mental health issues themselves, and we are very openly talking about it. We’re openly saying as far as possible, it’s created by people who understand what it is to go through something that difficult. So in the end, what we want to do is we want to create more therapists who are diverse so that clients who are diverse see their therapist as somebody from the community.
We follow the bio-psycho-social model of mental illness. It says, hey, something bad is happening in the country. Covid is a situation which is a brilliant example of a socio-cultural phenomenon that affects people’s mental health. So taking stance on things makes us seem like a mental health organization that understands the things that bother people because we’re not talking about things from an experience that we don’t have.
Daisy: You’re meeting people in the particular, in their identity, in the specific ways that they experience the world by representing their identity in your staff and opening this opportunity. And you’re also paying attention to the social, environmental factors that affect all of us. And so bringing new light and new imagination to what it means to offer mental health support to people. I imagine that re-narrating what mental health care can look like in your context, even just talking about it can be so hard for some people. So in addition to the elements of your story that you shared already, what inspires you to get up and do this work every day?
Rashi: I really like that you said, re-narrating, because “change the narrative” is something that we often say to ourselves.
And I absolutely love my team. We’re also expecting user survivors to help others. It can be retraumatizing for a lot of us. So it is very difficult to create these support structures within your team as well. And I’m not only talking about myself, I’m talking about the entire team when I talk about this.
So if I am a queer therapist and I’m listening to people talk about the same challenges that I went through, it is difficult for me to keep that space, though I want one of the things that alternate story does is reduce the space. That also means there’s a reduction of space which gives you that space to breathe.
Rashi: We have this listening circle that happens every week, and we started that because of Covid and people were feeling lonely. And the fact that it’s creating this space that so many people come in, they’re saying they look forward to it. And that just fills my heart when people write in, asking for a specific therapist because my friend recommended them to that’s such a win because we’re doing something right.
Daisy: I’m hearing so many beautiful elements of leadership. One, creating something so meaningful that people are telling their friends they’re showing up, they’re feeling restored as a result. Creating an organization where you are allowing your team to participate in your mission, which is so important, in addition to taking care of each other, actually taking care of your own mental health. Which I feel like there are so many pressures, sometimes on entrepreneurs, on leaders, to sacrifice their own flourishing, to benefit a mission in such a way that they’re actually living contrary to that mission.
And it sounds to me like there is space in the Alternative Story to actually reflect and to live in line with the whole reason the organization was created.
And so I’m wondering, as a leader right now, what is one challenge that you are currently wrestling with? And how are you navigating that and note that they do not need to be final answers here. What are you wrestling with right now?
Rashi: Yeah. So I think that there are a couple of things that I wrestle with on an ongoing basis. As a woman leader, and given that the service providers are women. So our organization has very few cis-men. Impostor syndrome, for me, is such a huge thing. One of the things that we constantly talk about is why am I doing this to say that when this is my organization, this is me, this is my team. Sometimes it’s all the same in my head space.
So when there is a critique of the organization that comes from within, it’s very difficult to keep and look at what they’re saying. It always seems really hurtful. Holding these two very difficult thoughts of where do I end? Where does the organization begin? Where does my team begin? Where do they end?
A lot of times your colleagues know more about you than your own family or your best friend, because it’s just that space. And that is a difficult place to kind of be
Daisy: Having that psychological ownership of the wellbeing of an organization isn’t necessarily the same as closeness and intimacy with each of the individual parts, the individuals that make up the organization. So that’s certainly a challenge and will resonate with a number of people.
So looking back over your journey, of course, this is a major accomplishment. Was there any time that you felt like you really failed along the way? And if so, what did you learn from that?
Rashi: I would say that we failed when we took on a partner organization. I’m very glad that this happened quite early in the journey before a lot of the harm was done. But one of the most important things that I learned is the ability to bounce back. There are a lot of things about how you can choose the right partners, of how you should do all the work that is required to ensure that you choose the right partners. But irrespective of how many things you do, we will all make mistakes somewhere or the other.
The thing is that if you created the space once, you can always do it again. You have learned, you’re better, and you can do it again — maybe even better because the environment has changed or you have changed. Most importantly, you have changed. I think getting up after a fall is extremely difficult, but it’s not impossible.
The other thing that I learned through this entire thing is being absolutely honest with yourself and others around you. When the partner threatened to say, hey, you can leave, but the team remains. It was very easy for me to say, hey, the team is not going to stay around without me. So I think trust the people that you’re building the organization with, trust yourself and trust that things will get better.
It might take a few days. It might take a few months, but it’s always going to get better because you just learn things on the way. Being open to the experience. Treating each failure as a learning is important and it’s only going to be hindsight. Don’t expect to learn things when you are in the moment because you’re just going to be caught up in the moment too much.
Daisy: What you said about coming together with partners, no matter how much evaluation you do, how much investigation you do, sometimes there just isn’t the right alignment and you find that out along the way, right, and then you have to solve for it and manage with the integrity and the courage to insist on who you want to be as a leader and as an organization.
So I’m curious, what is one value that you care most about? What’s one value that you are carrying with you right now?
Rashi: The first value that I think is the most important for me is justice. The second one that the Alternative Sody believes in is action, and the third one is empathy. For me, all three, obviously, I think makes a lot of sense in the kind of space that we’re in, but in the work that we do and the way the world is structured right now, for me, the most important value is that of justice. I often talk about this thing about natural justice. If something feels wrong or if something feels off, that’s the natural justice talking.
Most of us, especially in the social space, we want to believe in the value of justice. We’re doing what we do because we believe in the idea of justice. Whatever we do, whatever the Alternative Story does, whatever I as a human being do within the Alternative Story is guided by the need to have a just world. To have a world where opportunities are equal though resources might not be.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the story. In a jungle, each animal should get access to water according to its needs. So a stork should get a vase because it has this huge beak. A dog or a jackal should get, like, a deep drinking bowl so that they can do their thing and lap it up as they wish. Birds should have their own access. But that is what equity is.
Daisy: And I think that’s a beautiful illustration about the jungle of being able to have access as we need it when we need it, in the ways that we need it. And it certainly sounds to me like you are helping people to reach that restoration, that healing, that empathy that they need in the ways that they do.
So thank you so much for sharing that vision. For these last questions, I’ll just have you complete these sentences in a rapid fire manner. So say whatever comes to mind first in just a couple of words or a single word.
Communities are amazing because…
Rashi: I think communities are structures where healing happens.
Daisy: Someone who inspires you is…
Rashi: My grandmother. She fought for so many things in her life, and just seeing those fights, she’s going to be the number one inspiration throughout everything I do in my life.
Daisy: What does success mean to you?
Rashi: Loving what I do each day and having purpose and meaning for most days of my life.
Daisy: I agree with you there. What are you most proud of?
Rashi: I am most proud of in my life, of an action that I did, which was adopting my dog. She has been the number one and source of comfort. I think I’m most proud of that. She also features in a lot of Alternative Story work.
Daisy: That’s fantastic. Well, Rashi, thank you so much for being with us today. You are an inspiration. And I thank you personally for being a part of the global mental health movement, bringing care and restoration to so many. So thank you again for being with us.
The music for Foundry Conversations was composed by Amadeus Foundation and recorded by Amadeus String Youth Orchestra in Bello, Colombia. Amadeus cultivates the emotional intelligence of children and young people at high social risks through music addressing their need for social inclusiveness.
Do you want to listen more Foundry Conversations? Click on the following links to meet more Foundry members and their work to build they are doing to build a more just, inclusive and sustainable world:
- Episode 1: Meet The Hosts.
- Episode 2: Platforms for Activism with Irene Milleiro.
- Episode 4: Stories of Sexual, Reproductive and Health Rights in Bangladesh with Syeda Samara Mortada.
- Episode 5: Launching African Creatives with Chidi Nwaogu.
- Episode 6: A Social Media Platform for Voices Unheard with Vijay Sai Pratap.
- Episode 7: A Transformative Youth Orchestra in Colombia with Daniela Ocampo.
About Acumen Academy:
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Learn more at www.acumenacademy.org and on social media Acumen Academy.
