Dalit mental health: Is it just a buzzword?

Dalit mental health has become a social media post and not beyond. PIC/ISTOCK

A few years ago, Dalit mental health was introduced into the social consciousness of the country. A correlation seemed to be made between caste discrimination and deteriorating mental health of the Dalit Bahujan Adivasi and Vimukta (DBAV) communities. The understanding of the DBAV experience now had a mental health diagnosis, and the self-care vocabulary collided with a thousand-year-old oppressive system.

A 2025 study - Caste, mental health and self-harm: Emotive experiences of Dalit students at the Indian University by Dhaneswar Bhoi [who is he, why are we quoting a study by him] - examined the mental health of 250 post-graduate students at a university in Odisha, as the number of Dalit students enrolling here appears to be higher than that of other private and government universities. The study found that nearly 80 per cent of the students expressed severe emotional and mental health challenges, and over 22 per cent experienced suicide attempts at home or on campus.

Tellingly, this is one of the few studies that look into the mental health of Dalit students. Research on DBAV communities' mental health is sparse at best and is symptomatic of it being visible on social media but absent at the grassroots level.

‘Talking to a savarna therapist feels like explaining my existence all over again'

Krey Kannojia, a queer and Dalit person, explains how intersectionality makes accessing help more complex

Krey Kannojia is a 27-year-old queer and Dalit individual, as well as the first in their lineage to access therapy. Krey's first mental health breakdown occurred when they were 15 years old, and their savarna then boyfriend's family objected to the relationship. "At first, the reasons for their objection were superficial, like distracting him from his Class 12 board exam. But what lay underneath was something way more sinister," they say. The mental health episode was triggered when his family came to Krey's home with a list of gifts that he had given them through their relationship, "This was extremely humiliating," they add.

Krey Kannojia

After the incident, Krey recalls that they couldn't get out of bed, and were too shocked at the blatant casteism that their teenage heart and head had been subjected to. This finally spurred their mother to take their to a psychiatrist. "The psychiatrist was horrible. She put me on weight reduction medication instead of helping me with mental health," they add.

Krey was finally able to get some help around the age of 20, when one of their closest friends passed away, "I just couldn't bear the grief. I would constantly think that it should have been me. I thought to myself, ‘This is it. I have to go to therapy. There's no two ways about it," they add.

Around this time, Krey was also exploring their sexuality, "Queerness also plays a huge role in my mental health. I started feeling dysphoria," they say. Krey had already been through two therapists by then and finally found one through queer circles. "One of my friends suggested this therapist to me as she is queer-affirmative. I realised that she's also quite political, and understood caste and queerness. But, she did seem to understand caste beautifully," Krey adds.

Many dalits say that they do not have the accesibility. PIC/ISTOCK

Unfortunately, though, this therapist gave up her practice. "It's been hard to find another good therapist. But now my standards are high, and I know what I want. I cannot go to a Savarna therapist. I don't want them to sit down and sympathise, empathise with me. I want somebody who totally understands me," they say. "Now, because of intersectionality, I cannot go to somebody who's just DBAV either, because how am I supposed to explain dysphoria, queerness to them?"

Krey, who is currently pursuing an MBA after taking a break from their corporate job and has been taking on freelance work to supplement their income. "Money isn't stable. So, even though I need it, I really can't afford a therapist right now," they say. They're holding strong for now, for which Krey gives a lot of credit to their previous therapist, who said therapy cannot be the only tool in one's arsenal for mental health.

"She told me that I need community, and I cannot operate without community. I was doing all of this self-work, and she told me, ‘I don't want you hooked on therapy'. So she sent me resources and that made me realise that being in community is actually very helpful. Now that I have other Dalit trans people around me, it has become so much easier for me to just exist," they add. To others in a similar situation, they advise: "Get online, find people who look like you, are from spaces like yours, and DM them, reach out. That is how I realised I am not alone; there are many of us."

‘There are very few Dalit therapists'

Poet-artist Aleena, has given up on therapy and medication because it never centered her experience and pain

Aleena aka @iseesomeletters, often talks about her mental health struggles, and having attempted self-harm school and teenage years due to years of bullying, partially motivated by casteism and also racism.

Aleena

The Kochi resident has also been open about how therapy and medication were not a magic pill that fixed things. "I was in college when I went for therapy, and was diagnosed with clinical depression. The medication helped for six months and then suddenly stopped working. The psychiatrist told me that they would have to keep changing the medication," she says. This went on for a few years, when finally the medication gave her severe side-effects, "I told them I couldn't take it, that I was zapped out. they didn't take me seriously, as if I was making it up," she adds.

Aleena admits that she has not gone to a therapist in the community but also points that a caste conscious therapist does not necessarily mean they are not casteist. "There are very few, and those who are there are not available in Kochi. And, to be honest, the last time I visited a therapist, he told me that years of medication have altered my brain chemistry, and I will have to take medication for another five years to right that wrong. I decided right there that I will never get therapy after this," she says. What if the practitioner is from the DBVA community? "Maybe, I'm not sure. Like I said, it was very traumatic," she adds.

Decentering your trauma

Pallavi Bhanothu is a Dalit practitioner of Thespian therapy, which helps to imagine your trauma as outside your body, and interact with it more gently

Pallavi Bhanothu, 40, is a Thespian therapist based in Hyderabad, where she practises expressive art therapy that uses theatre acting techniques. Pallavi holds a Master's degree in theatre arts and a Diploma in Anti-Caste Mental Health Practices with Narrative Practices India Collective (NPIC). During the COVID pandemic, she began to work on her own mental health actively. "I slowly started enrolling myself in various courses, and then I arrived at expressive arts therapy. It's a platform for mental health, like drama, dance movement, painting and poetry. My work was already about understanding inequalities or intersectionalities and what it would take to be a theatre facilitator, trainer, what kind of things we work together with," she says.

Pallavi Bhanothu

Most importantly, Pallavi's therapy is informed by her own experience as a Dalit woman. One of her first sessions way before she took it on as a profession in 2018, was problematic, to say the least. "The Savarna therapist said ‘I can see it in your body'... when I said I have not been in a place to cook because of the depression and we end ordering food online. That kind of ended the session before it started," she adds.

But what exactly is expressive art therapy? "It creates a safe distance from Trauma when we process it," she says. The physical representation of the trauma is key, she believes. "We give it a costume, you can use a dupatta or something to create a costume for this character [for example, a client's fear of ‘elite spaces'] and question - How does this part move around? What is the space like? Is this part rushing around, or is it trying to find a corner so that it can quietly disappear into things? Then we dialogue with that part," she adds.

One of the workshop being conducted by Bhanothu

Many of Pallavi's clients have used the words "safety", and a few from the community have especially told her that it had "moved or shifted" something in them. "It may bring up joy, it may bring up grief, it may bring up rage, because people are left feeling ‘Why was I denied all this?'" she adds.

‘Who has the bandwidth for mental health when there is so much violence?'

Anti-caste activist Manisha Mashaal says that the mental health battle for a Dalit person starts right from childhood

The first hit to Manisha Mashaal's mental health was when her teacher made her stand at the front of the classroom, named her caste, and then shamed her for what the community ate. "I stopped eating non-veg after that. Not that it actually helped me in any way. You cannot escape it really," she adds.

Manisha Mashaal

"The mental health battle for a Dalit person starts right from our childhood," says Manisha Mashaal, an anti-caste activist, human rights Lawyer, and founder of the Maha Dalit Mahila Andolan and Swabhiman Society in Haryana. "We are never told about it [mental health] at home. We are taught about it when it is practiced on us by savarnas," she says.

Today, Mashaal is an anti-caste activist, human rights Lawyer, and founder of the Maha Dalit Mahila Andolan and Swabhiman Society in Haryana. Once at the receiving end of violence herself, Mashaal has been travelling into Haryana's hinterland to investigate caste-based sexual violence against children.

Pic/iStock

Is mental health accessible to children and adults in villages of Haryana? The question seems offensive, or obtuse, to her. "Recently we went to a town where a girl, a minor, was raped. By the time our fact-finding team reached the village, she had already taken some pills and died by suicide. These are the people who need mental health help the most but they can't even reach a place where they can ask for it," she says. "How do you have the mental bandwidth to ask for mental health help when the injustices are so violent and visceral?"