In India, four local organizations supported by the Fund are exploring whether increasing access to mental health care and education can create healthier relationships.
While India’s constitution guarantees equal rights to women, gender-based violence is common. The country reported more than 4.4 million cases of domestic abuse, kidnapping, or assault in 2022, a 4 percent increase from the year before. And nearly 40 percent of both men and women say it’s okay for a man to beat his wife if she is disrespects his family, neglects home or children, goes out without telling him, or refuses sex.
But the statistics don’t paint the full picture. Marriage is usually negotiated by families, with caste and religion as strong factors, giving young people little or no space to make decisions based on their own aspirations and compatibility. When abuse occurs, economics and stigma deter many women from speaking out. Several high-profile cases in recent years have sparked outrage and public protest, such as a husband acquitted of murder due to there being no ban on marital rape. Yet, relationship violence continues to be seen as a private, family matter.
Two years ago, the Fund for Global Human Rights and grantee partner Jan Sahas came together to develop a pilot program to offer counseling and life skill services for young people and their parents as a strategy for reducing domestic violence and promoting gender equality. The idea was that by increasing access to mental health resources and education, particularly in communities with few such resources, couples and young people could identify ways to stop domestic abuse before it starts.
Three additional grassroots organizations came together to collaborate on program development. They decided to focus on bolstering mental health with both women and men and equipping young people and soon-to-be-married couples with better communication, conflict resolution and negotiation skills. Then, they began rolling the programs out with communities in Delhi, Indore, Jaipur, and Mumbai.
Here’s what we learned
While the initiative began with a focus on providing education to youth and premarital counseling to young couples, it soon became apparent that the groups were truly starting at square one.
Few if any participants had encountered premarital counseling before. Due to stigma and cultural and religious norms where parents are key decision-makers about marriage, some were unsure about taking part. Additionally, the time needed to complete sessions posed a challenge for working families and youth, particularly young men.
So the groups began to adapt. One, which already worked closely with girls and young women, found ways to engage them with programming focused on confidence building and healthy relationships. Another successfully got both young women and men to begin tackling misconceptions about mental health and marriage: by the end of the sessions, both young women and men said they now understood the importance of partners asserting agency, being honest about expectations, and listening in a relationship.
After a year, the groups worked with the Fund and Jan Sahas to analyze the data they had collected and report on their findings, including ways in which they continue to refine and tailor their efforts based on their community’s needs and openness to mental health support.
What’s next
The project has provided powerful insights into the stigma surrounding mental health care, often rooted in inaccessibility and longstanding norms. It also demonstrated that young people especially need the rights tools and vocabulary to explore mental health and learn how to create healthy relationships.
The Fund has always delivered flexible funding so that grassroots groups can experiment, learn, and find new ways to create effective solutions that communities welcome. All four of the participating groups will continue to:
- Create toolkits tailored to the unique mental health needs of communities directly affected by relationship violence and gender inequality, including migrants, disabled women, domestic laborers, and youth.
- Expand substance abuse education in areas where community members identified it as a key driver of violence.
- Collaborate with other local organizations and schools to reach more young people with introductions to mental health and opportunities to break down stigmas.
Destigmatizing mental health and ending gender-based violence won’t happen overnight. This critical work remains woefully overlooked and under-resourced. But these are crucial steps toward improving gender equality. Grassroots groups count on the Fund’s support to develop, test, and expand this innovative approach to preventing gender-based violence and protecting the rights of women.
Donate now and help groups in India and around the world end gender-based violence from the ground up.
