Lived experiences must not be discounted, says mental health experts

Lived experiences and the journeys of caregivers on how we navigate pain is a social justice issue, said Bakul Dua, head of programme development, India Mental Health Alliance (IMHA), at a pre-event for Manotsava 2025, India’s national mental health festival, here on Friday.

A book titled Homecoming: Mental Health Journeys of Resilience, Healing, and Wholeness was launched on the occassion. It is an anthology compiled by Neha Kirpal (founding cohort, IMHA) and Nandini Murali (author of Left Behind Surviving Suicide Loss), bringing together the lived experiences of women navigating severe mental health conditions, offering deeply personal yet universally resonant reflections on resilience, healing, and wholeness.

Ms. Murali, in the book, writes about the trauma of losing her husband to suicide. “It ripped away a significant part of me,” she writes. She added at the event, “It takes courage to be vulnerable... Lived experience is wisdom.”

Humanising lived experiences lies at the intersection of public health, gender, class, and caste, said Ms. Dua.

Ms. Kirpal spoke of the loss of a sibling to suicide, the processing of it, and the healing that followed.

Kavita Arora, co-founder at Children First, spoke about her experience growing up with a schizophrenic mother. “I thought all mothers were like mine. I didn’t see it as trauma. In between my mother’s episodes, I played, and we went out on picnics.. and then there were times I would get thrashed.”

She said that she was in her 20s when she came across literature on schizophrenia. She writes in the book, “As I read, I recognised my mother in the descriptions.”