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Karina Pandya in Conversation with Co-Founder of the Banyan, Dr. Vandana Gopikumar


An incident of coming across a homeless and mentally ill woman in distress on the road in front of her college in Chennai paved the route for Vandana Gopikumar to establish one of the leading NGOs in the field of mental health – The Banyan. While she was yet a Master’s student of Social Work, Vandana along with a close friend Vaishnavi Jayakumar encountered several other incidents of not being able to find the right shelter and mental institution for a woman in need of medical and psychiatric attention. 

 

The Banyan, which was established in 1993 has been a one-stop destination to not only rescue, and rehabilitate but also treat mentally ill women from low-income groups. Vandana Gopikumar has pioneered a movement, helping thousands of individuals not only reintegrate into society but also secure long-term medical treatment. 

 

Not only is she the co-founder of the NGO – The Banyan, but is also the co-founder of The Banyan Academy of Leadership (BALM). She is also a member of the advisory committee of the Madras School of Social Work and is a Board member of Pallium India - an NGO in Trivandrum, Kerala that provides pain relief and palliative care for free.    

 

Karina Pandya dives into an interesting set of questions with Vandana Gopikumar.

 

1)    What interests you about social work that motivated you to establish an NGO of your own?

 

"Well, I think growing up my parents were very inspirational as in they did not tell me to do things but by demonstrating, they kind of drew me into a world that believed in equity and justice and the disadvantaged people. I thought this very natural to step in. Instinctively,  I didn’t take to social work by design it was Vaishnavi – my partner, my colleague and my best friend who said that it would be a good cause for me. So when I jumped into that it was like such a perfect match – it was like finding a soulmate from my profession!"   

 

2)    Can you describe how different it was for you to set up an NGO from scratch versus applying the knowledge that you gained from your Masters?

 

"I think knowledge or diverse systemologies focused on building perspectives which is a very important part. So I don’t divide knowledge into theory and practice as one is linked with the other, but what is perhaps important in education is to illustrate how knowledge can be applied to practice, therefore Constructivist pedagogy becomes extremely important. In our case, fortunately, we had a large component of fieldwork, brilliant faculty, fieldwork supervisor always kept to relating theory to practice and the emphasis was largely on doing and learning and then reflecting and then feeding back into what we did and questioning knowledge as well; so some critical thought as well. That was at the Madras School of Social Work in the early 90s – 91-93 was brilliant and helped hugely; that along with self-taught entrepreneurship because to set up an NGO you have to be able to dive deep into issues and remain committed and responsible; set up an entity, build your knowledge in that space but also develop qualities that allow for you to be persistent, allow for you to accept failure, that allow you to adapt, that allow for you to be entrepreneurial, that allow for you to build your networking skills. 

 

There’s a lot more than what you have in the textbooks. In terms of establishing an organisation of any sort and when it is mental health and homelessness you’re really talking about ultra-vulnerable persons and you're also talking about a complex problem that involves inter-sectionality, that involves the mind, that involves diverse conceptualisation of madness and mental illness which is typically known in today’s world at least based on the DSM and therefore in a very reductionist sort of box to open that up and to celebrate madness in different and diverse ways, to look at personal recovery in different ways, to look at social roles related to recovery and valued social roles, to also address the social determinants, devaluation as a result of groups of persons based on non-alignment with social norms and arrays being pushed to the margins.

 

 All of these concepts emerged over a period of time as we learned how mental illness sort of transitioned from being a condition to an illness to a disease to a brain disorder with the space for diversity, to address the plural needs and plural manifestations."                  

 

 

3)    Mental Illness is often neglected and viewed as a taboo. Did you at any time doubt the progress The Banyan would make over the years?

 

"There was no doubt about the progress of the Banyan but it’s a complex issue so figuring out how much we can do vs successful organisation and that remains 3 decades later. The Banyan may be known as a successful organisation but we have to be cognizant of the fact as an issue universally/globally we haven’t progressed much. Sure there may be human rights that have entered the conversation and this diverse conceptualisation and the role of uses in advocacy and building or co-creating mental health services but you still have atrocities being meted out, you still have people with severe mental health being abused more than those who live without mental illnesses, you have limited workforce participation, you still have limited identification pathways, you still have limited penetration in rural areas, you still have divides based on cast and gender and class. 


Like I said the framing of intersectionality, the unpacking of social determinants that we have clustered and reinforced repeatedly but not pulled out the strands around and therefore focused on independently as much as we ought to do. Much of this has not transformed dramatically so we are seeing some care gaps bridged because of greater investments. There is of course a policy now. There are universal progressive reforms. It’s not so much about doubts around the organisation’s growth of course. At every point, we are somewhat resilient and determined. More than that, we are concerned if we are in the right direction, whether we are paying things on a granular level attention, whether are we diving deep, are we representing multiple truths. Those are the main questions – we should never fail to ask ourselves."            

 

4)    How were you able to recruit workers from across the globe?

 

"I think when collaborates are formed with a focus on certain issues then obviously the goals of the organisation are visible, the services that you develop, the advocacy, what you stand for, your vision; that draws people so the recruitment is more of a collaborative – different people get together to work together because they feel aligned to the values and vision."   



 

5)    What led you to start The Banyan Academy of Leadership (B.A.L.M)?

  

"BALM was a natural evolution. We developed services for people from disadvantaged backgrounds particularly homeless people, people from indigenous backgrounds, people from indigenous communities and from low-income households. It is a mental health program focused on providing care to disadvantaged communities with a public health focus. It is a long-term care-inclusive space. The idea of community inclusion and participation that we promote among these groups and an emergency care recovery centre in the context of those who require emergency hospitalisation. 


So, the whole spectrum really end to end was provided and therefore we had to obviously examine the efficacy of these models. To do so we needed an independent entity that would examine the impact, use standardised instruments, understand if the outcomes were meaningful and the changes that we had to make, and adaptations in design, in the social architecture so much learning using mixed methods resulted in a lot of evidence being built. BALM really stands for research, to examine the efficacy of our models or larger problems in the mental health sector intersecting with the social sector and for policy advocacy as a consequence of tweaking our models and services as a result and certainly using all of this in education so the mental health workforce can be expanded."        

 

 

 

6)    How many centres are there currently, besides Adaikalam working for The Banyan?

 

"We operate out of four states – largely southern except Maharashtra. 

 

So Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Karnataka in collaboration with The Azim Premji Foundation- Aaladamara. In Tamil Nadu we also have an Emergency Care and Recovery Centres (ECRCs)collaborative in partnership with the National Health Mission and Civil Society Organisations who implement some of the care approaches that we have formulated and contextualised of course. Again with The Azim Premji Foundation that supports all of this. This is across 10 districts currently operative out of 17 districts in Tamil Nadu. 

 

5 districts in Kerela, 2 districts in Karnataka 2 districts in Maharashtra and that’s our emergency care recovery center. Our Home Again model which was validated is one of the 27 practices in terms of being a justice-based community living approach. The Banyan operates out of these five states plus four more and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh."

 

 

7)    Can you let me know your insight about homelessness and mental illness in India?

 

"Largely homelessness and mental ill health or homelessness is a consequence of severe mental health illness attributed to lack of access to care pathways or abandonment on the part of families. The access to care pathways narrative is true because at one point there are only a few health programs or there are people who accessed alternative pathways and that in isolation may not work in combination with you know other pathways that are evidence-based results in better outcomes where the person feels comfortable in that space. 

 

So besides access to care pathways besides immediate support social disadvantage and poverty – they have very significant roles to play because caregivers could feel a great amount of strain. Persons with mental illness themselves may be subject to various structural barriers and therefore much of their distress emanates from the background of their experience of living in a society that is largely discriminatory so violence also plays a very important role as well. The point at which the person leaves home is typically a point where the person is subject to violence This could be a perpetrator- a parent or a loved one when the child is young, when the child’s sexual abuse is rampant, and underreported and not addressed. 


Secondly, it moves on to a stage when the person is probably bullied in school based on various perceived disadvantages. It could be physical abuse or violence at the hands of a family that doesn’t know any other way in which they work with children or adolescents or teachers would do the same and in addition, we may also have most importantly in a marital relationship – having intimate partner violence or domestic abuse – all of this again results in both precipitating mental illness and also perpetuating distress. Homelessness therefore is an outcome of some of the underlying social issues that intersect with obviously ill health because mental illness is real. The biomedical framing is relevant but one can’t be sort of restrictive and only focus on the biomedical framing. 


One can’t move away from the narrative these components play an important role but without being cognizant of the various socio-cultural factors that shame, and perpetuate the social trends of a person with severe mental illness. The point of exit from society is sure absent of care pathways, limited safety net, and limited access to safe spaces but also certainly violence."           

 

 

8)    How has your journey been working from the tender age of 23 till now?

 

"It didn’t seem like it was tender then. For some reason, I feel that 23 felt both young and old so maybe I’m an old soul, but maybe there is a large component of me that will always remain quote unquote young at heart. Because I don’t believe in the distinctions of young and old. You can be an old soul with a very young heart so I still feel 23 in many ways but I also feel like the same old soul. The combination sort of helps." 

 

  

9)    What are the upcoming plans for The Banyan and B.A.L.M?

 

"Well, we are 30 years old and we have established our models and consolidated the work that we are doing. So much of our scale-up to bridge gaps now operates through partners and so our focus is on knowledge transfer capacity building with a focus on bridging these care gaps to the extent that we can knowing that we can’t do everything, knowing that collaboratives have to be built and knowing that our models are not the only one. An array of approaches is required so we play a small part in the large ocean.


 But besides that, we wish to advocate for policy. A large part of the advocating policy focuses on the voices of our service providers. Besides that, we want to share our work with a larger audience through dissemination through the Banyan Academy whether through education or research."    

 

 

10) Did anyone in this field ever inspire you to do the work that you currently are doing?

 

"Well, several people – Vaishnavi, my colleagues, our partners and my husband, all the animals that have been part of my life and most significantly several of the people who have been part of the Banyan’s journey whether it is collaborators, volunteers. Certainly single handily in a very significant way the service users who shown different ways of living, different ways of knowing, different ways of being resilient, different ways of interpreting mental illness or madness and different ways of sharing and different ways of loving and different ways of caring. Despite the unbearable suffering and losses that they have suffered. 


Being in their midst one cannot learn to address inequities and just be more compassionate than I think or rather let me reframe that – If everybody has an opportunity to sort of meet people that we have it is difficult to not be inspired or not to feel touched or motivated to be part of a chain of a better world that we want to construct."         

 

 

 

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